New MCU group offers best-in-class power consumption and an extended temperature range

Renesas Electronics Corporation has released the RA0E2 MCU Group based on the Arm Cortex-M23 processor. The new, cost-competitive devices deliver extremely low power consumption, extended temperature range, and various peripheral functions and safety features.

The company introduced the RA0 MCU series in 2024, offering affordability and low power consumption. RA0E1 devices have already been adopted in consumer electronics, appliance and white goods, power tools, industrial monitoring and other applications.

The new MCUs are fully compatible with RA0E1 devices, offering pin-expansion while maintaining the same peripherals and ultra-low power. This compatibility allows customers to re-use existing software assets. The new devices provide industry-leading power consumption of only 2.8mA current in active mode and 0.89mA in sleep mode. Also, an integrated High-speed On-Chip Oscillator (HOCO) allows the fastest wake-up time for this class of MCU. The fast wake-up enables the MCUs to stay in Software Standby mode more of the time, where power consumption drops to a minuscule 0.25µA.

The RA0E1 and RA0E2 ultra-low-power MCUs deliver an excellent solution for battery-operated consumer electronics devices, small appliances, industrial system control and building automation application.

The RA0E2 devices have a feature set optimised for cost-sensitive applications. They provide a wide operating voltage range of 1.6V to 5.5V, so customers do not need a level shifter/regulator in 5V systems. These MCUs also integrate timers, serial communications, analog functions, safety functions and security functionality to lower customer BOM cost. Packaging options are also available, including a tiny 5mm x 5mm 32-lead QFN.

In addition, the new MCU's high-precision (±1%) HOCO improves baud rate accuracy and enables designers to forego a standalone oscillator. Unlike other HOCOs in the industry, it maintains this precision in environments from -40C to 125C. This wide temperature range enables customers to avoid costly and time-consuming 'trimming', even after the reflow process.

"The market reception for our RA0 Series has exceeded even our own high expectations," said Daryl Khoo, Vice President of the Embedded Processing Marketing Division at Renesas. The RA0E2 Group MCUs deliver the same ultra-low power and price point that have been so popular with our customers. The addition of an extended temperature range and more memory opens up even more applications and use cases. We plan to further expand the RA0 product lineup, delivering optimal solutions for 8-16-bit MCU users transitioning to 32-bit MCUs."

The new RA0E2 Group MCUs are supported by the company's Flexible Software Package (FSP). The FSP allows faster application development by supplying all the infrastructure software needed, including multiple RTOS, BSP, peripheral drivers, middleware, connectivity, networking, security stacks, and reference software to build complex AI, motor control and cloud solutions. It enables customers to integrate their own legacy code and choice of RTOS with FSP, providing full flexibility in application development. Using the FSP will ease migrating RA0E1 designs to larger RA0E2 devices if customers wish to do so.

The RA0E2 Group MCUs, the FSP software, and the RA0E2 Fast Prototyping Board are available now.