Renesas Electronics Offers New IoT Platform

Renesas Electronics, a supplier of semiconductor solutions, is throwing its hat into the IoT fray with its new Renesas Synergy Platform, a new offering designed to allow embedded systems engineers to start product development at the API level, giving them more time to design features. The platform should be generally available in Q4 2015.

“Engineering teams used to spend valuable development time writing software ranging from low-level peripheral drivers to complex communication and specialty stacks. This resulted in months of engineering resources spent integrating, testing, and maintaining software that didn’t differentiate the end-product in the market,” said Ali Sebt, Senior Vice President, Renesas Electronics Corporation. “By enabling engineers to start design at the software API level and enjoy a real-time control system without the need to build any baseline functionality, the Renesas Synergy platform accelerates embedded development, inspires innovation and enables differentiation.”

The Renesas Synergy Platform integrates qualified software with a new family of MCUs and an ecosystem of tools and support options into one platform. It includes all rights and benefits to enable software development for an unlimited number of end products. There is no need to purchase a third-party commercial RTOS, communication stacks (TCP/IP, USB), file systems, graphic user interfaces and their associated development tools. 

Elements of Renesas Synergy Platform include:

The Renesas Synergy Platform uses qualified embedded software, tested to commercial standards with ensured compatibility across all Renesas Synergy MCUs. The Renesas Synergy Software Package (SSP) includes Express Logic’s X-Ware. X-Ware includes the ThreadX real time operating system (RTOS) plus X-Ware middleware NetX and NetX DUO IPV4 and IPv4/IPV6 TCP/IP stacks respectively, USBX USB Host/Device/OTG protocol stack, FileX MS-DOS compatible file system and GUIX graphics runtime library. 

These are bundled in the Renesas application framework that is optimized for use with Renesas Synergy MCUs and compliant to the IEC/ISO/IEEE-12207 Software Life Cycle Process standard. Sold, maintained, and directly supported by Renesas, the software is guaranteed by Renesas to operate as per a published specification.

Within the Renesas Synergy Platform, there is a new, scalable MCU family that spans a wide spectrum of performance, power usage, safety, security, cryptography, connectivity, and graphics capabilities. The family provides customers a variety of choices to meet their requirements for IoT designs ranging from low-end, battery-powered products to complex communication and user interface hubs.

The Renesas Synergy Platform’s Eclipse-based integrated solution development environment (ISDE) is available with C compilers from GNU and IAR Systems. Also available are Express Logic’s Windows based GUIX Studio graphic user interface prototyping tool and TraceX real-time event graphical analysis tool. Customers can begin full development with the purchase of any one of many Development or Starter Kits available for each of the Synergy MCU series. 

Renesas will also offer a number of Renesas Synergy Product Example kits, each one an example of an actual commercial product. Customers can leverage this information to modify the Product Examples to fit the needs of their own similar end products.

The Renesas Synergy Gallery offers an online selection of software products from third-party software vendors that augment the Renesas Synergy Software Package. Customers can  browse and download Renesas Synergy Software Package-compliant software for functions and features such as specialized communication stacks, control algorithms, and security services.

All components of the Renesas Synergy platform are supported directly by Renesas, giving customers a single point of contact for integrated support spanning software, Renesas Synergy MCUs and hardware solutions. Customers will not need to purchase service or maintenance contracts. Renesas warrantees the specification, provides regular feature upgrades and addresses all product questions through its global sales support organization.