A cost-effective development board equipped with features like a high-performance SoC and versatile communication options to simplify the setup of open-source automotive Linux environments.Â
Renesas Electronics Corporation, a provider of advanced semiconductor solutions, has launched a new development board, R-Car S4 Starter Kit. The company claims that the board is designed for automotive gateway systems and is affordable, making it easily accessible to developers. The development board is built around the company’s R-Car S4 system on chip (SoC), which boasts computing capabilities and a wide range of communication features. These features enable cloud communication and safe vehicle control. With the starter kit, engineers have a convenient solution to kickstart their initial evaluation of various automotive applications. It is designed for developing car servers, connected gateways, connectivity modules, and more. Rapid application development becomes achievable with this accessible and feature-rich development board.
The R-Car starter kits are specifically designed to streamline the setup process for open-source automotive Linux environments, making it easier for engineers new to automotive software development. The kits also come equipped with two Ethernet ports, two Controller Area Network Flexible Data-Rate (CAN FD) ports, and one Local Interconnect Network (LIN) port, providing versatile communication options. Furthermore, there’s ample memory with 128GiB Universal Flash Storage (UFS) and 64MiB Quad Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) flash memory, ensuring efficient and seamless operations.
Some of the key features of the development board include:
- Eight 1.2 GHz Cortex A55 cores
- One 1.0 GHz Cortex R52 dual core (lock-step)
- Two 400 MHz RH850 G4MH dual cores (lock-step)
- Achieves a remarkable application performance of up to 27 kDMIPS
- Real-time performance surpasses 5.3 kDMIPS
“The R-Car S4 SoC has already been well received by our customers as a choice for gateway SoCs that support the evolution of E/E architecture,” said Takeshi Fuse, Head of Marketing and Business Development, High Performance Computing, Analog & Power Solutions Group at Renesas. “At the same time, our customers requested a development environment that can be used widely across their design teams while keeping the cost down. This low-cost board addresses the need, and we are confident that it will accelerate their vehicle development.”
