Japanese electronics giant Renesas has expanded its RZ/G series with 64bit general-purpose microprocessors (MPUs) for human machine interfaces (HMIs) and IoT edge systems.

The RZ/G3L and RZ/G3SE are pin-compatible MPUs that support a broad range of industrial and consumer HMI and IoT gateways and home gateways requiring high processing performance and high-speed network connectivity.

The RZ/G3L integrates a GPU (graphics processing unit) for 3D graphics rendering along with an H.264 video codec. This combination is suitable for powering smart retail terminals and medical HMI devices that demand rich graphics and video capabilities.

The RZ/G3SE is for IoT devices with basic display requirements, such as EV chargers and industrial gateways that provide status indicators and configuration screens. Because they are pin-compatible, developers can reuse a PCB design across multiple product variants, simplifying development and reducing time to market.

These products have a CPU cluster incorporating up to four Arm Cortex-A55 cores running at up to 1.2GHz, with a Cortex-M33 coprocessor running at 200MHz. At the same time, the third-generation RZ/G series adopts a proprietary power management architecture that reduces standby power.

As a result, they can lower standby power to the 1mW level in deep standby mode. They can remain in standby mode while retaining the Linux system in memory and resume operation quickly when needed. These power-saving features are suitable for industrial and IoT devices that require always-on connectivity.

Equipped with high-speed interfaces such as PCIe, TSN-capable Gigabit Ethernet and USB, the MPUs allow developers to add application-specific features and connectivity options. PCIe supports connectivity to 5G communication modules, Wifi 6 modules and external AI accelerators. TSN-capable Gigabit Ethernet enables low-latency and reliable communications for industrial networks, where real-time performance is critical.

“As industrial and IoT devices grow more sophisticated, customers need to balance performance, power consumption, connectivity and design scalability,” said Hari Pendurty, vice president at Renesas (www.renesas.com). “The RZ/G3L and RZ/G3SE were developed to help customers meet these evolving requirements and scale products more efficiently by leveraging a common hardware platform across different applications.”

Renesas offers ten ecosystem options, including GUI development environments, operating systems (OS), software and systems-on-module (SoMs).

The devices are available in 14mm square 400-pin LFBGA and 17mm square 368-pin LFBGA packages. They have ECC (error checking and correction) on both on-chip memory and the external DDR interface. Security features include secure IP, secure boot, Arm TrustZone and tamper detection. Operating temperature is -40 to +125˚C.

The RZ/G3L (www.renesas.com/rzg3l) and RZ/G3SE (www.renesas.com/rzg3se) are available today. An evaluation board kit, consisting of a Smarc v2.1 module board and a carrier board, is available for both devices.