MCU family

Renesas has announced the first RX family MCU products built around the RX CPU, which will form the core of the company’s MCU business in future.

The family refers collectively to next-generation MCUs built around the RX CPU core and integrating the capabilities of the company’s existing 16- and 32-bit MCUs employing complex instruction set computer (CISC) architecture.

They are being released in two series: the RX600, designed for high speed, and the RX200, designed for low-voltage operation and low power consumption.

The first products in the RX Family form the RX610 group, which belongs to the RX600 series. These MCUs are suitable for applications such as high-end office equipment and digital consumer products that need to run large-scale programs rapidly and at a high performance level. The group has a maximum operating frequency of 100 MHz.

The RX610 Group is built around the high-performance RX CPU core and delivers performance of about 1.65 MIPS/MHz at its maximum operating frequency.

The basic structure of the CPU employs a five-stage pipeline and a Harvard architecture that enables simultaneous instruction reads and data writes. Its performance is further enhanced by the ability to execute operations in fewer cycles, an improved multiply-and-accumulate unit, and a 32-bit barrel shifter.

Together, these improvements enable the group to deliver about twice the performance of earlier 32-bit CISC MCUs when running at the same operating frequency.