Renesas Electronics, a supplier of semiconductor solutions, announced the expansion of its Renesas Synergy™ Platform designed to accelerate time to market, reduce total cost of ownership and remove many of the obstacles engineers face when designing devices for the Internet of Things (IoT).
Expansion includes launch of the new S124 Group of Synergy Microcontrollers (MCUs) with ultra-low power operating characteristics and precise analog signal acquisition/generation capabilities ideal for sensor applications. In support of these new MCUs is an updated version of the Synergy Software Package (SSP) and the e² studio Integrated Solution Development Environment (ISDE) tool. The SSP and e² studio tool also incorporate further enhancements that address the entire Synergy Platform adding new capabilities for networking, industrial automation, power management and automated configuration to save even more precious time for embedded system developers.
“The Synergy Platform continues to grow in value to both developers and their end-customers,” said Mark Rootz, marketing director of Renesas’ Internet of Things BU. “This new S124 Synergy MCU Group is another example of platform growth that brings ARM® Cortex®-M0+ based MCUs to the lower end of the application spectrum while remaining completely scalable and compatible with the companion Cortex®-M4 based Synergy MCU groups above it that we launched last year. Software support for these new S124 MCUs is there by expansion of the SSP enabling customers to quickly and easily migrate between all Synergy MCU groups as their needs change and still be able to re-use existing application code. We continue to evolve all elements of the Synergy Platform and build value as demonstrated here with new MCUs, new software, plus ever-growing tool and partner support for the platform.”
Synergy MCUs in the S124 Group are based on Renesas’ proprietary ultra-low power technology consuming just 70.3 µA per MHz of MCU clock speed for extremely long battery life in low power and battery-powered portable applications. These MCUs carry advanced analog signal capabilities with 14-bit Analog-to-Digital Converters, 12-bit Digital-to-Analog Converters, and low power comparators. User interface applications are supported with more than 30 channels of capacitive touch sensing inputs. Broad connectivity is expanded by USB-FS and CAN interfaces, plus safety and security are assisted with on-chip support for SRAM parity checking, a NIST-compliant True Random Number Generator (TRNG), and AES-256 cryptography with chaining. MCU packages are as small as 4 mm x 4 mm for space-constrained end-products. Typical applications include smart edge-node IoT sensors, home appliance control, and point-of-sale terminals.
Development support for the new S124 Group of Synergy MCUs and the DK-S124 development kit is provided in SSP version 1.1.0 and e² studio version 5.0. The SSP v1.1.0 has specific optimisations for the ThreadX® real-time operating system (RTOS) and the USBX™ communication stack to work efficiently within the S124 MCU’s smaller memory sizes.
SSP v1.1.0 also includes enhancements for IPv6 networking and services for connected devices, BSD-compatible socket layer support, support for SSI audio and CAN communications, plus several additions to the Application Framework.
e² studio v5.0 is now built upon the latest updated eclipse v4.5 (Mars release) plus it includes many new features to enhance automated guidance for starting new Synergy Platform projects such as presenting all building blocks of a project in a graphical stack representation for simplification of workflow and providing complete visibility into overall memory usage at a glance.
Overall Synergy Platform expansion continues globally with the addition of five new Verified Software Add-on (VSA) products from Europe and Japan to be available on the Synergy Gallery in spring 2016. VSA software from third-parties are verified by Renesas to be SSP-compatible for developers to easily add specialty functions to their Synergy Platform-based projects with confidence. New global VSA partners address specialised functions in the areas of home and industrial automation including Echonet, CANopen, and BACnet, plus secure communications, and cloud services. These US-based VSA products are now fully available on the Synergy Gallery – Cypherbridge Systems SDKPac for Synergy secure IoT and web connectivity including SSL/TLS, Icon Labs for security services including firewall and secure boot, and Skkynet for secure real-time data connectivity, on premise or cloud-based (SaaS).
Availability
Synergy MCUs of the S124 Group are now at mass production status and will be available through Renesas sales channels in April 2016, along with their development kits. An early preview of SSP v1.1.0 and e² studio v5.0 will be available on the Synergy Gallery at end of February 2016 with final released versions available in April 2016.
Now three Synergy MCUs Groups in the Synergy MCU Family have reached mass production status – the S124, S3A7, and S7G2 Group – representing 30 individual Synergy MCU part numbers in a wide variety of memory and package sizes ranging from 128 KB to 4 MB of flash memory. More MCU Groups are on the way, as well as new qualified SSP software capabilities, tools, kits, solutions, and verified partners. To learn more about the organic Renesas Synergy Platform, please visit http://www.RenesasSynergy.eu.
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