Renesas Electronics was founded in 2003 through the merger of Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric.
On April 1, 2010, NEC Electronics and Renesas Electronics merged to become the world's No. 1 MCU supplier and one of the leading brands of advanced semiconductor solutions for SoC system-on-chips and a wide range of analog and power devices. At the time of its inception, Renesas jumped to become the world's third largest semiconductor company, behind Intel and Samsung.
However, Renesas Electronics merged a few years after the road did not go well, from the establishment of the global semiconductor oldest three position all the way to struggle, in 2014 fell out of the global top ten.
In 2016, Renesas began to bet on the automotive industry, and the acquisition of Intersil for $ 3.2 billion, the introduction of analog and mixed-signal chip product line, profitability is only gradually come up. 2017, Renesas occupies 20% of the world's MCU market share.
On September 11 last year, Renesas announced the acquisition of U.S. analog chip major IDT for about $6.7 billion, an acquisition that was seen as a response to the threat of old rival NXP in the automotive field. The automotive market is expected to be the largest segment for semiconductor makers in the future, amid declining growth in the smartphone market. Yet in 2018, STMicroelectronics, Infineon and NXP all saw growth in their automotive business revenues, while Renesas saw a decline from 2017.
Compared with its closest competitors, Renesas is the only supplier whose automotive business revenue declined in 2018, which not only makes people feel a hint of surprise
Tomomitsu Makioka, chairman of Renesas Electronics China, believes that Renesas has already predicted the status quo of the weakening of the market demand in 2018, and at the same time also according to the decline of the demand for the corresponding measures, such as adjusting the factory Production capacity. In addition this is not just a matter for Renesas Electronics alone, but also requires constant and enhanced communication with agents and sales channels." Our customers are also cautious about the future of the market. Because there are so many situations that are out of the control of manufacturers, such as the current issue of trade friction between the U.S. and China, which no one could have predicted, but it just happened." Tomomitsu Makioka believes that the occurrence of such uncontrollable things as the U.S.-China trade friction, the impact on Renesas customers is very obvious, so Renesas need to constantly adjust themselves to adapt to changes in the market.
At present, the most important thing for Renesas is to adapt to the merger and acquisition with IDT as soon as possible, and realize the effect of "1+1 is greater than 2".
According to IDT's financial report, in recent years, its gross profit margin of more than 60%, the compound growth rate of 2014-2018 is as high as 14.8%, and its technology and products are exactly in line with the automotive business that Renesas Electronics is betting on, and its data centers and communications infrastructure will also open up a larger market for Renesas. 2019 Renesas and IDT acquisition was finally finalized, and Renesas jumped to become Japan's largest semiconductor company.
Currently Renesas has global sales of 760 billion yen and 19,000 employees worldwide. In terms of financial results, Renesas has revenues of 757 billion yen.
"Semiconductor products for automotive electronics are Renesas' representative business. In terms of applications, the automotive field accounts for about half of total sales, and it is difficult to find a car that does not use Renesas electronics at all." --This is what Tomomitsu Masaoka, Chairman of Renesas Electronics China, said at this year's CITE China Information Expo.
The automotive market is certainly one of Renesas' most important markets. According to data provided by srategy Analytics 2018, Renesas Electronics ranked No. 1 in the automotive MCU/SOC market share congregation in 2017, including automotive chips related to powertrain, xEV, body, chassis & safety, infotainment & instrumentation.
In addition, in 2017 Renesas released an ADAS and autonomous driving platform Renesas Autonomy, along with the R-CarV3M SoC, which is equipped with 2 ARM CortexA53, dual CortexR7 lock-step cores and an integrated ISP that meets hardware that meets the ASIL-C level functional safety requirements, and can be scaled for a number of ADAS applications such as smart cameras, panoramic surround view systems and radar. In addition to the R-Car family of products, Renesas also has specialized processor chips for radar sensors such as the RH850/V1R-M series.
It should be said that the R-Car series is the entry point for Renesas into autonomous driving. Previously launched third-generation products R-CarH3/M3 already have the L2 level of autonomous driving needs. Only as a Japanese company, Renesas layout in the field of automatic driving seems unusually low-key.
As Japan's largest semiconductor manufacturer, Renesas' goal is definitely not only the automotive market, but also the Internet of Things (IoT) market is the focus of Renesas' layout.
On May 28, Renesas Electronics 2019 Product and System Solution Seminar - Xiamen Station was officially held. At the event, Renesas not only showcased a number of its own embedded solutions, but also for the first time demonstrated a number of IDT's IoT solutions, as well as system-level solutions that integrate the technologies of both Renesas and IDT.
Renesas cut into the IoT field and focused on promoting two main technologies this year: DRP technology and low-power SOTB technology.
When it comes to Renesas' layout in the IoT field, we have to mention that Renesas is focusing on promoting DRP technology and low-power SOTB technology this year.
DRP technology, simply put, is a local embedded AI solution that can replace the previous cloud-based AI computing power.
In today's world where major AI chip vendors such as Shangtang and Kuangshi, as well as traditional semiconductor vendors such as Nvidia, Intel, and Qualcomm are laying out embedded AI, what are the highlights of Renesas' DRP?
It is understood that Renesas unique DRP technology, is a dynamically programmable processor, can be in accordance with the different time to put the dynamic logic programmed, which is particularly suitable for applications such as image processing, etc. There are AI -MAC in the DRP, with a large number of computational units can come to realize the convolutional arithmetic.
In addition, compared to general-purpose embedded AI chips on the market today, such as MCUs, DSPs, and FPGAs, the Renesas DRP can achieve 10 to 100 times more powerful processing power, while consuming much less power. It is understood that the main frequency of this DRP is only 60Mhz, while the processing power is 13 times faster than the A9 MCU.
SOTB technology, on the other hand, is an extremely low-power technology that allows MCUs to reduce current consumption to one-tenth of the traditional current. Simply put, this technology makes battery-less modes possible.
Due to the use of non-doped transistors, the change in slush characteristics compared to traditional planar transistors allows stable operation at ultra-low voltages, such as around 0.5 volts. If a conventional MCU is powered by a 3V coin cell battery, it may run out of power after a month.
If STB technology is adopted to the MCU, since the current required by itself is very low, maybe 3μA is enough, this power consumption is almost negligible, and uninterrupted operation can be realized. Coupled with the low-power DRP embedded AI solution, the entire system can be low-latency, secure and low-power. Renesas Electronics also emphasized that its ultra-low-power products can ensure that the device does not change batteries for about 10 years, which is its technological advantage.
Chen said that the promotion of SOTB technology will be divided into three steps, the first step is mainly to replace all kinds of MCU applications that need to replace the battery; the second step is expected to 2021 in the Bluetooth BLE to add MCUs with SOTB function. such as smart home appliances, smart buildings, and so on. The third step will be SOTB and E-AI technology **** with the addition of the same, to make a complete solution, in agriculture, intelligent transportation and other fields can be used.
At the 2019 VLSI and Circuit Technology Symposium held in Kyoto, Japan, on June 12, Renesas demonstrated test results related to the industry's first embedded 2T-MONOS (two-transistor-metal-oxide-nitrogen-oxide) flash memory based on 65nm SOTB technology. The new SOTB-based technology has been adopted in the Renesas R7F0E embedded controller, which is designed for energy harvesting applications. Compared to non-SOTB 2T-MONOS Flash (which requires about 50 μA/MHz read current), the new technology achieves a read current of only about 6 μA/MHz, which is equivalent to a read energy consumption of 0.22 pJ/bit, reaching the lowest energy level of MCU embedded Flash memory. This new technology also helps achieve a low effective read current of 20μA/MHz on the R7F0E, the best in the industry.
It is worth mentioning that the rapid development of energy harvesting technology makes self-powering of smart wearable devices expected to become a reality. For example, bracelets, headphones and other wearable devices are currently limited by the biggest power consumption problem, and Renesas next step will be in the Bluetooth BLE to increase the MCU with SOTB function, it is clear that wearable products will greatly benefit.
It is reasonable to expect that in the near future, energy harvesting systems utilizing Renesas' SOTB technology will make a big difference in wearable devices such as smartwatches.