Support for starter kit announced

Paul Boughton

Renesas Electronics Europe, a leading supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, has announced that IAR Systems’ toolchain IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM has full support for the RZ/A1 Renesas Starter Kit (RSK) development suite.

A key differentiator of the RZ/A1 MPU is the abundance of up to 10MB of embedded SRAM. This is sufficient to remove the need for external RAM. Numerous customer benefits stem from this: hardware costs are reduced by moving from a three-chip solution (CPU, Flash, RAM) to a two-chip solution (CPU, Flash); software performance is increased because the RAM is connected directly to the internal bus, so there is no external interface delay; and designs can be simpler, more compact and therefore get to market quicker.

RZ/A1 series of MPUs

Time-to-market can also be significantly improved by selecting the right toolchain and software partners. Renesas is says that its RZ/A1 series of MPUs is fully supported by IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM.

Tim Burgess, head of marketing in Renesas Electronics Europe said: “We are proud of our longstanding relationship with IAR Systems; the inclusion of the support for the RZ Starter Kit adds another string to the already impressive show of support from this long-term partner. In an environment where tools can be the decisive factor between a successful or failing development, Renesas is very glad to have IAR Systems’ support. The IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM IDE provides a clear competitive advantage for Renesas and enabled the RZ/A1 to reach an outstanding EEMBC CoreMark benchmark score of 4.15.”

The RZ/A1 series of embedded microprocessors is a Cortex-A9 based microprocessor, optimised for the Human Machine Interface (HMI) market. It supports up to WXGA (1280 x 800) displays, is able to drive two screens concurrently, and includes up to two camera inputs. RZ/A1 series MPUs also include all the connectivity for a standard application: for instance, 10/100 Ethernet, two channels of USB 2.0, and up to five channels of CAN.