Renesas Sets New MCU Performance Bar with 1-GHz RA8P1 Devices with AI Acceleration

Renesas Electronics introduced the RA8P1 microcontroller (MCU) Group targeted at Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) applications, as well as real-time analytics. Designed for running AI on device, the new MCUs establish a new performance level by combining 1GHz Arm Cortex-M85 and 250MHz Cortex-M33 CPU cores with the Arm Ethos-U55 Neural Processing Unit (NPU). This combination delivers the highest CPU performance of over 7300 CoreMarks and AI performance of 256 GOPS at 500MHz.

Cadence Design Systems announced the availability of the industry’s first Verification IP (VIP) that enables comprehensive and fast verification of the physical layer (PHY) for complex protocols such as PCIe 5.0, USB3/4, DDR5, LPDDR5, HBM and MIPI CSI-2 and DSI 2.0. This allows companies to thoroughly test and optimize their PHY designs, accelerating development.