New motor control MCUs deliver industry-leading performance

Renesas Electronics Corporation has introduced the RA8T2 MCU group for high-end motor control. Based on a 1GHz Arm Cortex-M85 processor with an optional 250MHz Arm Cortex-M33 processor, the RA8T2 devices deliver an unmatched level of performance for managing the real-time control of high-end motors in industrial equipment, robots, and other systems that require high-speed precision operation. The optional Cortex-M33 processor enables customers to integrate real-time control, communication functions, and non-real-time operations on a single chip, thereby saving cost, power, and board space.

The RA8T2 MCUs leverage the high performance of the Arm Cortex-M85 processor and Arm’s Helium technology to deliver a significant performance boost for DSP and ML implementations. This added performance enables AI functions that can predict maintenance requirements for motors, reducing costly downtime.

In addition to their outstanding processing power, the MCUs offer high-speed networking support through multiple communication interfaces, including two Gigabit Ethernet MACs with DMA, a two-port EtherCAT slave, and several others. High-speed communication is crucial in factory automation, where each device is connected to a network within the factory and constantly synchronised with other machines to send and receive commands and data.

These devices are equipped with up to 1MB of high-speed MRAM non-volatile memory with 100MHz access. MRAM delivers faster write speeds, along with higher endurance and retention, compared to Flash. Additionally, the device is equipped with a TCM of 256KB for Cortex-M85 and 128KB for Cortex-M33. TCM provides users with high-precision, real-time performance, featuring reduced jitter, and offers stable performance in motor control processing that handles numerous interrupts and branches.

“The RA8T2 Group extends our long-term industry leadership in motor control solutions, offering unparalleled levels of performance and functionality,” said Daryl Khoo, vice president of the Embedded Processing Marketing Division at Renesas. “These devices showcase the breadth and depth of our technology and demonstrate our deep understanding of what our motor control customers need to build next-generation factory automation and robotics products.”

The new devices feature a timer function that supports PWM functionality up to 300 MHz, allowing easy handling by control software and efficient waveform generation for driving inverters. The complementary PWM function of the GPT timer, optimised for inverter drive, makes it easy to implement control algorithms, such as the output of complementary PWM for multiple phases (including single-phase and three-phase), automatic insertion of dead time, generation of asymmetric PWM, and linkage with AD and comparators. The timer is also equipped with a phase-counting function, allowing it to control AC servos that require axis position information using a two-phase pulse encoder. The device’s ADC has a 16-bit resolution and a channel-specific sample-and-hold function (three channels), enabling high-precision simultaneous sampling of three-phase current values. This eliminates the necessity for correction processing, lowering the software load and contributing to improved control precision. Equipped with two units, it is possible to sample three-channel currents of two motors simultaneously. The Port Output Enable (POEG) and high-speed comparator function allow the PWM output to be quickly shut off when an overcurrent is detected. The shutoff state can be selected (Hi-z, Hi, Low) according to the inverter specifications.

Key Features of the RA8T2 Group MCUs

• Core: 1 GHz Arm Cortex-M85 with Helium and TrustZone; Optional 250MHz Arm Cortex-M33
• Memory: Integrated 1MB high-speed MRAM and 2MB SRAM (including 256KB TCM for the Cortex-M85 and 128KB TCM for the M33)
• Analogue Peripherals: Two 16-bit ADC with 30 analogue channels, two three-channel S/H, two-channel 12-bit DAC, four-channel high-speed comparators
• Communications Peripherals: Dual Gigabit Ethernet MAC with DMA, EtherCAT slave, USB2.0 FS Host/Device/OTG, CAN2.0 (1Mbps)/CAN FD (8Mbps), I3C(12.5Mbps), I2C(1Mbps), SPI, SCI, Octal serial peripheral I/F
• Advanced Security: RSIP-E50D Cryptographic engine, immutable storage for FSBL, secure debug, secure factory programming, DLM support, tamper protection, DPA/SPA protection
• Timers: 14-ch PWM timers, 4-ch high-resolution, 4-ch low-power timer (16-bit x2ch and 32-bit x2ch)
• Packages: 176-HLQFP, 224- and 289, and 303-BGA

The new RA8T2 Group MCUs are supported by Renesas’ Flexible Software Package (FSP). The FSP allows faster application development by providing all the infrastructure software needed, including multiple RTOS, BSP, peripheral drivers, middleware, connectivity, networking, and security stacks, as well as reference software to build complex AI, motor control and cloud solutions. It allows customers to integrate their own legacy code and choice of RTOS with FSP, thus providing full flexibility in application development. Using the FSP will ease migration of existing designs to the new RA8 Series devices.

The company has combined the new RA8T2 Group MCUs with numerous compatible devices from its portfolio to offer a wide array of Winning Combinations, including the UAV. Winning Combinations are technically vetted system architectures from mutually compatible devices that work together seamlessly to bring an optimised, low-risk design for faster time to market. Renesas offers more than 400 Winning Combinations, featuring a wide range of products from the Renesas portfolio, to help customers speed up the design process and bring their products to market more quickly.

The RA8T2 Group MCUs are available now, along with the FSP software. The new MCUs are supported in Renesas’ Flexible Motor Control development kit, which allows for easy evaluation of motor control using permanent magnet synchronous motors (brushless DC motors), as well as the Renesas Motor Workbench development tool. This development kit offers a unified design platform featuring numerous motor control MCUs from the RA and RX families, facilitating the migration of IP across multiple devices.