Renesas Electronics (TSE: 6723), a global supplier of semiconductor solutions, today announced the launch of a new product for high-performance robotic applications - RZ/V2H, further expanding its popular RZ product family of microprocessors (MPUs). This product has the highest level of performance, enabling visual AI and real-time control functions.
RZ/V2H is equipped with the latest generation of Renesas’ proprietary AI accelerator DRP-AI3 (Dynamic Configurable Processor-AI3), which brings an energy efficiency of 10TOPS/W, up to 10 times higher than earlier models. The pruning technology adopted by DRP-AI3 significantly enhances AI computing efficiency and improves AI inference performance to 80TOPS, allowing engineers to directly process visual AI applications on edge AI devices without relying on cloud computing platforms. The latest DRP-AI3 acceleration technical details were announced at the International Solid-State Circuit Conference (ISSCC 2024) in San Francisco, USA.
The RZ/V2H integrates four Arm Cortex-A55 CPU cores operating at a maximum frequency of 1.8GHz (for Linux application processing), two Cortex-R8 cores operating at 800MHz (for high-performance real-time processing), and A Cortex-M33 sub-core. By integrating these cores into a single chip, the product can effectively manage visual AI and real-time control tasks, making it ideal for the demanding robotics applications of the future. Because the RZ/V2H's lower power consumption eliminates the need for cooling fans and other heat dissipation components, engineers can design smaller, lower-cost, and more reliable systems.
Renesas has developed the OpenCV accelerator using its proprietary DRP technology to speed up OpenCV processing; compared to CPU processing, the speed is increased by up to 16 times. The combination of DRP-AI3 and the OpenCV accelerator enhances AI computing and image processing algorithms, allowing virtual SLAM technology used in applications such as robot vacuum cleaners to be executed efficiently and in real time.