On February 29, 2024, Renesas Electronics announced the launch of a new product aimed at high-performance robotic applications—the RZ/V2H, further expanding its popular RZ product family of microprocessors (MPU). The RZ/V2H delivers the highest level of performance in the product family, enabling visual AI and real-time control capabilities.
The RZ/V2H is equipped with Renesas’ next-generation proprietary AI accelerator DRP-AI3 (Dynamically Reconfigurable Processor-AI3), which offers an energy efficiency of 10 TOPS/W, achieving up to ten times improvement compared to earlier models. Additionally, the pruning technology used in the DRP-AI3 accelerator significantly enhances AI computational efficiency, boosting AI inference performance to 80 TOPS. This performance enhancement allows engineers to process visual AI applications directly on edge AI devices without relying on cloud computing platforms. Recently, details of the new DRP-AI3 acceleration technology were unveiled at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC 2024) held in San Francisco, USA.
The RZ/V2H integrates four Arm® Cortex®-A55 CPU cores with a maximum operating frequency of 1.8 GHz (for Linux application processing), two Cortex-R8 cores operating at 800 MHz (for high-performance real-time processing), and a Cortex-M33 sub-core. By integrating these cores into a single chip, the product effectively manages visual AI and real-time control tasks, making it an ideal choice for demanding future robotic applications. Thanks to the lower power consumption of the RZ/V2H, there is no need for cooling fans and other heat dissipation components, allowing engineers to design smaller, more cost-effective, and more reliable systems.
Daryl Khoo, Vice President of the Embedded Processing 1st Division at Renesas, stated: “As an excellent supplier of motor control microprocessors, Renesas is ready to embrace the next challenge of leveraging AI technology to drive the development of the robotics market. The RZ/V2H will facilitate the development of the next generation of autonomous robots with visual AI capabilities, independent thinking, and real-time action control.”
OpenCV is the open-source industry standard library for computer vision processing. In this regard, Renesas has developed an OpenCV accelerator using its proprietary DRP technology, which can accelerate OpenCV processing speed; compared to CPU processing, the speed can be increased by up to 16 times. The combination of DRP-AI3 and the OpenCV accelerator enhances AI computation and image processing algorithms, enabling efficient and real-time execution of virtual SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) technology used in applications such as robotic vacuum cleaners.
To accelerate development, Renesas has also released the “AI Applications” (a pre-trained model library for various cases) and an AI SDK (Software Development Kit) for rapid AI application development. By running this software on the evaluation board of the RZ/V2H, even engineers without extensive AI knowledge can easily evaluate AI applications in the early stages of the design process.
Rolf Segger, founder of SEGGER Microcontroller GmbH, stated: “We are excited to be involved in the launch of the RZ/V2H, which combines artificial intelligence technology with real-time control. SEGGER’s J-Link debugger is widely adopted in numerous embedded development projects worldwide, and it will provide the support needed for the RZ/V2H to accelerate the next generation of robotics innovation. We look forward to taking our decades-long partnership with Renesas Electronics to the next level.”
