A processor design brings low power, fast wake-up, and high-speed connectivity to industrial and connected devices.
Renesas Electronics has expanded its RZ/G Series with two 64-bit microprocessors (MPUs) for human-machine interface (HMI) and Internet of Things (IoT) edge applications. The RZ/G3L and RZ/G3SE support up to four Arm Cortex-A55 cores running at up to 1.2 GHz, along with a Cortex-M33 coprocessor running at 200 MHz. Both devices also offer PCIe, Gigabit Ethernet with Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN), and USB connectivity for applications that need high-speed networking and additional system interfaces.
The two MPUs are pin-compatible, allowing developers to use the same printed circuit board (PCB) design for different product versions. This can help reduce hardware redesign work when moving between systems with different display and graphics requirements.
The RZ/G3L includes a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) for 3D graphics and an H.264 video codec. It is aimed at systems such as smart retail terminals and medical HMI devices that need graphics and video processing.
The RZ/G3SE is designed for systems with simpler display requirements. Target applications include electric vehicle (EV) chargers and industrial gateway devices that use displays mainly for status information and configuration.
The MPUs also use a power management architecture designed to reduce power consumption in standby. In deep standby mode, the devices can operate at 1 mW while retaining the Linux system in memory. This allows systems to resume operation without having to restart the operating system, which can be useful for industrial and IoT devices that need to maintain connectivity while spending long periods in low-power states.
For connectivity, both devices support PCIe, TSN-capable Gigabit Ethernet, and USB. PCIe can be used to connect 5G and Wi-Fi 6 communication modules, as well as external artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators. TSN-capable Gigabit Ethernet supports low-latency communication for industrial networks where predictable data transfer is required.
The RZ/G3L and RZ/G3SE are intended for industrial and consumer HMI systems, IoT gateways, and home gateways where processing performance, networking, and power consumption are key design considerations.
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