Scalable AI SMARC SoM accelerates time to market for HMI and embedded vision systems

Renesas Electronics Corporation has released a scalable SoM SMARC Winning Combination board solution composed of ten of the company's ICs, including MPU, power and analog ICs. The board solution quickens the development of AI IoT face/object detection, image processing, and 4K video playback applications, covering inspection equipment, surveillance cameras, and a range of industrial and building automation HMI and embedded vision systems.

The board is based on the SMARC 2.0 industry standard, which specifies an 82mm x 80mm form factor. The SMARC SoM board provides designers with a selection of three different scalable versions of the company's 64-bit RZ/G2 MPU: an RZ/G2N dual-core Arm Cortex-A57 MPU operating at 1.5GHz for mid-range performance; the RZ/G2M MPU with dual-core Arm Cortex-A57 and quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 (1.2 GHz) for high performance; and the RZ/G2H MPU with quad-core Arm Cortex-A57 and quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 for ultra-high performance. All three MPUs (two cores up to eight cores) provide integrated 600MHz PowerVR 3D graphics and a 4K UHD H.265 and H.264 codecs to meet the requirements of different computer processing requirements.

“AI and video processing blend well together in embedded vision systems. The SMARC 2.0 winning combo reference design offers multiple processors from the Renesas RZ/G2 Family, making it an excellent AI development platform for accelerating time to market with reduced customer risk,” said DK Singh, director, Systems and Solutions Team at Renesas. “Our scalable solution’s extensive on-board interfaces, large memory and programmable clocks for different needs makes it an excellent turnkey solution for a wide range of applications. And its industry-leading RZ/G2 MPUs with 3D graphics engine and 4K UHD and full HD video codec provides higher performance per dollar than competing 64-bit MPUs and GPUs.”

The board provides designers with a choice of RZ/G2 MPU with up to 35.6K DMIPS performance, plus 2GB to 4GB LPDDR4 RAM and 32GB eMMC. Each RZ/G2 MPU can run edge video analytics and AI frameworks. The MPUs provide an integrated AI software library, a comprehensive set of interfaces, ECC protection on both internal and external memories, Linux OS, and a VLP tested and maintained by the company. The solutions also feature CIP SLTS kernel, and a Linux kernel bundled with a software development environment. Best of all, the SMARC SoM board provides optimised power and programmable timing tree to aid the RZ/G2 MPU with a broad range of applications.