“We are very committed to Indian market and being one of the prominent player of Microcontroller and embedded we always try to become most trusted semiconductor solution partner to our customer by offering them quality and reliable almost ready to use solutions.”

Diversification in consumer needs is impacting the semiconductor industry and fueling the demand for speedy and sophisticated product development. To address the rapidly evolving customer needs, Renesas Electronics has been transforming itself into a valuable business partner, capable of rapidly and continuously providing new solutions that accurately capture market trends and consumer needs, rather than serving simply as a vendor supplying semiconductors.

Renesas Electronics unveiled its India-centric solutions developed at Renesas Electronics India’s Solution Centre during Electronica India 2015 from September 9-11, 2015 in New Delhi. The company showcased its state-of-the-art technologies and solutions across Automotive, Industrial, HMI (Human Machine Interface), Connectivity, Office Automations (OA), Home Automation (HA), Smart Grid, Home Appliances, Medical and Healthcare Electronics at the event. Renesas also demonstrated its innovative solutions for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) incorporating the company’s latest system-on-chip (SoC), the R-Car V2H, for the first time in India.

At electronica India 2015 show, Electronics Maker interviewed Mr. Yashoranjan Kambdur, Director, General Purpose Products, Renesas Electronics India Private Limited about Renesas technology solutions and recent products.

1. What is Renesas market focus?

The semiconductor industry in India is probably at its peak and its best. We are seeing a lot of undertakings and developments thanks to “Make in India” campaign. There is a lot of positive energy in industrial and consumer domains, which are the areas we are concentrating from the general purpose portfolio. People are becoming more and more conscious about what they buy, what they pay and why they pay for a particular solution or product. The reason is, this is the generation of internet; people can compare things and experience things. People are aware of smarter things, green energy and other trends. This is opening new opportunities as people are willing to accept and adapt the latest technology, which demands smarter semiconductors, thus microcontroller and microprocessor products. Renesas is focusing on offering solutions and devices to cater these new opportunities in smart city, smart factory, smart auto, smart home, smart energy and much more.

2. What do you say about your leadership in MCU segment? What are the recent innovations for this product?

According to the latest report from market research firm, Gartner, microcontroller revenue grew 5.7% in 2014 to $15.8 billion, with Renesas Electronics firmly in the top spot. Our “Green & Global” corporate vision drives us to achieve sales gains in the developed and developing countries that are moving toward Green societies, Green systems and Green devices. This shift is happening regardless of economic uncertainties because new electronic systems generate major benefits for consumers, businesses, governments and the environment. By producing large volumes of MCUs for innovative products and applications, Renesas is expanding in many markets and geographies.

Renesas has a wide range of MCU device portfolio ranging from ultra-low power to power packed high end microcontrollers and microcomputers. On the very low end we have RL78 family of product, which we call “True Low Power Microcontrollers”. The reason is we believe low power consumption is not only in the normal operating frequency, but also in the standbymode. These microcontrollers are used extensively in industrial and metering, building automation and consumer applications apart from battery operated gadgets. On the other side, we have 32 bit RX microcontrollers for high end industrial, motor control and connectivity applications. They have upto 4MB flash ROM, 512KB RAM and offer many types of connectivity like 13 serial ports, USB-FS & USB-HS/OTG, Ethernet (Dual), R-SPI, and SDHI, PDC, MMC and other communication interfaces in a single device.

Renesas RZ series is based on widely accepted ARM architecture. It offerson chip 10MB SRAM which makes it possible to have an MPU system closer to MCU type of embedded application ideal for HMI and supporting Linux without use of complex external memory like DDR’s.

3. How is IoT driving need of advanced semiconductor solutions?

The Internet of Things (IoT) seems to be on the tip of everyone’s tongue. From a semiconductor vendor, it impacts a range of applications and platforms so it has a significant effect on planning and delivery of products. There is a tremendous amount of activity around embedded design for IoT, particularly for emerging application areas like mobile healthcare, wearables and smart appliances.

This will continue to drive design and development of smaller, faster, very low power and higher performance devices, which is in line with our company’s vision. Renesas Electronics see a growing trend around on-chip integration of peripherals, such as wireless/RF, touch screen and LCD drivers, to support the growing number of devices featuring wireless connectivity, touchscreens, advanced audio/video, and other functions that provide a rich user experience.

If we talk about IoT application, it performs in 2 aspects. One is on the front end, where you have low power sensors connecting smaller systems and at the back end bigger devices with a web network connecting each other and enabling communication in-between. To connect all types of sensors at the front end, it requires low-power and extensive analog interface as, usually sensors are analog inputs. On the other hand when these sensors talks to a main CPU and main CPU gets connected to the net a large Flash & RAM is required to do data updating. RX devices helps IoT applications because of its compatibility with all internet communication protocols, like Wi-Fi, ZigBee etc.

4. Please discuss some of the advanced semiconductor solutions for IoT applications Renesas is working on?

Recently we have announced a new platform for embedded and IoT product development, Renesas Synergy. It is a complete and qualified platform that accelerates product development, inspires innovation and enables differentiation.

The Renesas Synergy is an integrated platform that provides added value to customers in the following three ways: ① accelerating time-to-market② reducing total cost of Ownership(TCO), ③ lowering barriers of entry.

The platform comprises: (1) software packages whose operation has been verified, (2) new microcontroller families, (3) development toolkits, (4) solutions, and (5) a gallery. Renesas believes the Synergy Platform will strike a chord with customers looking to get new IoT-enabled products to market quickly.

Also when you have thousands of these devices running embedded software connected on the internet simultaneous you will need tested, qualified, certified software and communications stacks. This is exactly Renesas Synergy offers.

5. Can you brief us on the work Renesas Electronics has been doing in its India Solution Center?

Considering the robust growth momentum and technology implementations in the Indian semiconductor industry, Renesas Electronics has been working on advanced solutions towards enabling the industry to develop future proof cutting edge products in its India Solution Center. The center has been instrumental in quick breakthrough innovations towards the journey of Renesas Solutions for a world of tomorrow. The center is currently working on state of the art cutting edge technologies across automotive, industrial and office automations, home appliances, HMI, smart grid etc.

6. Does Renesas support trainings at Universities? Please share your contribution for Industry-academia partnership.

For Industry Academia Programs – all the three involved – industry, academician and student involved are equally responsible for the success of such partnership. There are hurdles at every step of implementing such program such as approvals from corporate to share selected information, analyzing why student would need this extra bit and are students capable of receiving what is taught, and ultimately students’ commitment to learn more.

We are taking small steps to impart knowledge and training and motivate students to innovate and make futuristic solutions. We have been interacting with universities to understand their requirement and design a training program to suit their requirements.

Currently we are working with our University partner for Anna University, Tamil Nadu and Delhi Technological University, New Delhi to teach latest microcontrollers and embedded systems. We conduct workshops and contests so that students not just get information & training but are also motivated to work on hands-on projects to participate in design contests.

From our Gadget Renesas(GR) group, we have introduced open source compatible boards for students and hobbyists. Currently, Pan-India contest based on GR Kaede board is going on, which will conclude in December 2015.