Renesas announces power efficient 4th Generation R-Car automotive SoCs
Renesas has expanded its popular R-Car Family of system-on-chips (SoCs) for entry-level Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). The new devices, the R-Car V4M series and the expansion of the existing R-Car V4H series, deliver robust AI processing capability and fast CPU performance, while carefully balancing performance and power consumption. Their TOPS/W performance and power-optimised features make them ideal for entry-level, cost-sensitive ADAS applications such as front smart camera systems, surround-view systems, automatic parking and driver monitoring systems.
Based on the same advanced 7-nm manufacturing process technology as the R-Car V4H series, the new R-Car V4M series delivers deep learning performance of up to 17 TOPS and boasts high-speed image processing and precise object recognition using on-board cameras, radar and LiDAR. With the addition of the new R-Car V4M and R-Car V4H devices, customers can now select the best suited SoC option in a scalable Renesas ADAS portfolio. These devices offer advanced AI technology, performance and power efficiency to meet a diverse array of ADAS application requirements. The new devices maintain pin compatibility within the same series and software compatibility with existing R-Car products, allowing OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers to reuse existing software and reduce engineering costs.
The R-Car V4M and R-Car V4H series feature up to four Arm Cortex-A76 cores delivering up to 81K DMIPS performance for application processing. It also comes with three Arm Cortex-R52 lockstep cores with up to 25K DMIPS performance for real-time operation. The new devices are extremely power efficient, providing 9 TOPS/W performance. In a typical full-feature smart camera with an 8-megapixel sensor, the R-Car V4M consumes around 5 watts of power – 50 percent less than similar devices on the market.
Automotive engineers developing with the R-Car V4M series and R-Car V4H series can enjoy the latest features of the full SDV development environment offered by Renesas. The newly launched R-Car Open Access (RoX) SDV platform integrates all essential hardware, operating systems (OS), software and tools needed for automotive developers to rapidly develop next-generation vehicles with secure and continuous software updates.RoX allows OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers the flexibility to virtually design a broad range of scalable compute solutions for ADAS, IVI, gateway, and cross-domain fusion systems as well as body control, domain, and zone control systems. The platform comes with a Software Development Kit (SDK) and the AI Workbench, which enables developers to validate and optimise their models and test their applications all in the cloud.
Renesas is sampling the R-Car V4M and R-Car V4H devices to leading automotive manufacturers now, with mass production scheduled in Q1/2026.
