is a Japanese

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical resistivity and conductivity, electrical conductivity value falling between that of a electrical conductor, conductor, such as copper, and an insulator (electricity), insulator, such as glas ...

manufacturer headquartered in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

, initially incorporated in 2002 as Renesas Technology, the consolidated entity of the semiconductor units of

Hitachi () is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. It is the parent company of the Hitachi Group (''Hitachi Gurūpu'') and had formed part of the Ni ...

and

Mitsubishi The is a group of autonomous Japanese multinational companies in a variety of industries. Founded by Yatarō Iwasaki in 1870, the Mitsubishi Group historically descended from the Mitsubishi zaibatsu, a unified company which existed from 1870 ...

excluding their

dynamic random-access memory Dynamic random-access memory (dynamic RAM or DRAM) is a type of random-access semiconductor memory that stores each bit of data in a memory cell, usually consisting of a tiny capacitor and a transistor, both typically based on metal-oxide ...

businesses, to which

NEC is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational information technology and electronics corporation, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. The company was known as the Nippon Electric Company, Limited, before rebranding in 1983 as NEC. It prov ...

Electronics merged in 2010, resulting in a minor change in the corporate name and logo to as it is now. In the 2000s to early 2010s, Renesas had been one of the six largest semiconductor companies in the world. As of 2022, it is the world's third-largest automotive semiconductor company and the largest

microcontroller A microcontroller (MCU for ''microcontroller unit'', often also MC, UC, or μC) is a small computer on a single VLSI integrated circuit (IC) chip. A microcontroller contains one or more CPUs (processor cores) along with memory and programmable i ...

supplier. The company also has presences in the markets of analogue and

mixed-signal integrated circuit A mixed-signal integrated circuit is any integrated circuit that has both analog circuits and digital circuits on a single semiconductor die.memory devices, and

SoCs SOCS (suppressor of cytokine signaling proteins) refers to a family of genes involved in inhibiting the JAK-STAT signaling pathway. Genes * CISH * SOCS1 * SOCS2 * SOCS3 * SOCS4 * SOCS5 * SOCS6 * SOCS7 Suppressor of cytokine signaling 7 is a pro ...

. The brand Renesas is a contraction of "Renaissance Semiconductor for Advanced Solutions".

History

Renesas Electronics started operation in April 2010, through the integration of

NEC Electronics is a Japanese multinational information technology and electronics corporation, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. The company was known as the Nippon Electric Company, Limited, before rebranding in 1983 as NEC. It provides IT and network solut ...

, established in November 2002 as a spin-off of the semiconductor operations of NEC with the exception of the DRAM business, and Renesas Technology established on April 1, 2003, the non-DRAM chip

joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acces ...

and

, with their ownership percentage of 55 and 45 in order. The DRAM businesses of the three had become part of

Elpida Memory Micron Memory Japan, K.K. is a Japanese subsidiary of Micron Technology. It was formerly known as established in 1999 that developed, designed, manufactured and sold dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) products. It was also a semiconductor fou ...

, which went bankrupt in 2012 before being acquired by

Micron Technology Micron Technology, Inc. is an American producer of computer memory and computer data storage including dynamic random-access memory, flash memory, and USB flash drives. It is headquartered in Boise, Idaho. Its consumer products, including ...

. A basic agreement to merge was reached by April 2010 and materialized on the first day, forming the fourth largest semiconductor company by revenue according to an estimation from iSuppli. In December 2010, Renesas Mobile Corporation (RMC) was created by integrating the Mobile Multimedia Business Unit of Renesas with the acquired Nokia Wireless Modem Business Unit. In 2011, Renesas Electronics was adversely affected by the

2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami The occurred at 14:46 JST (05:46 UTC) on 11 March. The magnitude 9.0–9.1 (M) undersea megathrust earthquake had an epicenter in the Pacific Ocean, east of the Oshika Peninsula of the Tōhoku region, and lasted approximately six minutes ...

and flooding in

Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...

. In 2012, the company, which had about 50 thousand employees of manufacturing, design and sales operations in about 20 countries in 2011, decided to restructure its business, including the sale and consolidation of its Japanese domestic plants, to become profitable. In December 2012,

INCJ The , headquartered in Tokyo, is a public-private partnership between the Japanese government and 19 major corporations. The INCJ was established as a temporary (15 years) corporate entity on July 27, 2009; with the prime objective of "boosti ...

, a Japanese public-private fund, and several key clients decided to invest in the company. Through the investment, Renesas aimed to secure 150 billion yen as fresh capital by September 2013 and make use of it for investment in development of the

and analog and power chips for automotive and industrial uses, plant improvements, and corporate acquisitions. In January 2013, Renesas transferred some of its back-end plants to J-Devices. In September 2013,

Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American designer, developer, manufacturer and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data center, networking, software, broadband, wirel ...

acquired most of Renesas Mobile Communication. With the allotment of third-party shares to the nine investors completed in September 2013, INCJ became the largest shareholder in the company. Renesas announced its new business direction and issued its corporate presentation titled "Reforming Renesas” in October 2013. In the fiscal year ended in March 2014, Renesas recorded its first ever net profit since it started operation as Renesas Electronics Corporation in 2010. In July 2014, the subsidiary Renesas Mobile Communication was consolidated, after the company had decided to withdraw from the 4G wireless business. In September 2014, the sale of the display driver IC unit of Renesas to

Synaptics Synaptics is a publicly owned San Jose, California-based developer of human interface (HMI) hardware and software, including touchpads for computer laptops; touch, display driver, and fingerprint biometrics technology for smartphones; and touch ...

was completed. In September 2016, Renesas announced that it would acquire

Intersil Intersil is an American semiconductor company headquartered in Milpitas, California. As of February 24, 2017, Intersil is a subsidiary of Renesas. The previous Intersil was formed in August 1999 through the acquisition of the semiconductor busin ...

for $3.2 billion. In February 2017, Renesas completed the acquisition. In April 2017, Renesas unveiled a

self-driving A self-driving car, also known as an autonomous car, driver-less car, or robotic car (robo-car), is a car that is capable of traveling without human input.Xie, S.; Hu, J.; Bhowmick, P.; Ding, Z.; Arvin, F.,Distributed Motion Planning for S ...

concept car A concept car (also known as a concept vehicle, show vehicle or prototype) is a car made to showcase new styling and/or new technology. They are often exhibited at motor shows to gauge customer reaction to new and radical designs which may or ...

at a global developer conference, stating that it will start delivering a new line of products for self-driving cars in December 2017, as it takes on global giants such as

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

. The new technology acts as an onboard nerve center, coordinating and controlling vehicle functions. In September 2018, Renesas announced that it has agreed to buy

Integrated Device Technology Integrated Device Technology, Inc., is an American corporation headquartered in San Jose, California, that designs, manufactures, and markets low-power, high-performance mixed-signal semiconductor solutions for the advanced communications, com ...

for $6.7 billion. The acquisition was completed in March 2019. In 2020, Renesas announced its plans to wind down its production of diodes and the compound device. In February 2021, Renesas announced that it has agreed to buy

Dialog Semiconductor Dialog Semiconductor PLC is an American founded UK-Domiciled manufacturer of semiconductor-based system solutions. The company is headquartered in the United Kingdom in Reading, with a global sales, R&D and marketing organization. Dialog create ...

for $5.9 billion. The acquisition was completed in September 2021. In March 2021, a fire at the Naka Factory owned by a subsidiary of Renesas caused significant damage to equipment. On April 17, 2022, Renesas restarted its production at the Naka Factory. In August 2021, Renesas completed the acquisition of Dialog Semiconductor Plc, a leading provider of battery and power management, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth® low energy and Industrial edge computing solutions. In December 2021, Renesas also completed the acquisition of Celeno Communications, a provider of smart Wi-Fi solutions. In March 2022, Renesas and

Tata Elxsi The Tata Group () is an Indian multinational conglomerate headquartered in Mumbai. Established in 1868, it is India's largest conglomerate, with products and services in over 150 countries, and operations in 100 countries across six continents ...

established a Next-generation EV Innovation Center (NEVIC) in Bangalore, to develop targeted solutions for electric vehicles. In June 2022, Renesas announced a strategic partnership with

Tata Motors Tata Motors Limited is an Indian multinational automotive manufacturing company, headquartered in Mumbai, India, which is part of the Tata Group. The company produces passenger cars, trucks, vans, coaches, buses. Formerly known as Tata En ...

and Tejas Networks, both

Tata Group The Tata Group () is an Indian multinational conglomerate headquartered in Mumbai. Established in 1868, it is India's largest conglomerate, with products and services in over 150 countries, and operations in 100 countries across six continent ...

companies. The companies entered a partnership for the development and production of semiconductor solutions for automotive, IoT and 5G semiconductor solutions for emerging markets including India. In May 2022 Renesas announced the re-opening of its "Kofu" Fab which will utilize the 300mm geometry for the fabrication of power semiconductors. The facility is scheduled to be online in 2024. In July 2022, Renesas completed the acquisition of Reality Analytics, Inc. Adding additional resources for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. In October 2022, Renesas completed the acquisition of Steradian Semiconductors Private Limited, a fabless semiconductor company providing 4D imaging radar solutions. In September 2022, Renesas signed a strategic partnership with

VinFast VinFast LLC is a Vietnamese private automotive company headquartered in Vietnam. Established in 2017, it is a member of the conglomerate organization Vingroup, that was founded by Phạm Nhật Vượng. It is the first Vietnamese car brand to ...

from

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...

to announce expanding agreement of automotive technology development of electric vehicles (EVs) and delivery of system components. In December 2022, Renesas won the 2022 “Outstanding Asia-Pacific Semiconductor Company Award” by Global Semiconductor Alliance.

Products

The offerings of Renesas Electronics include: *

Microcontroller A microcontroller (MCU for ''microcontroller unit'', often also MC, UC, or μC) is a small computer on a single VLSI integrated circuit (IC) chip. A microcontroller contains one or more CPUs (processor cores) along with memory and programmable i ...

RL78 RL78 Family is a 16-bit CPU core for embedded microcontrollers of Renesas Electronics introduced in 2010. Architecture Although it has eight 8-bit registers or four 16-bit register pairs, essentially all arithmetic operations are performed ...

R8C The Renesas 'R8C'' is a 16-bit microcontroller that was developed as a smaller and cheaper version of the Renesas M16C. It retains the M16C's 16-bit CISC architecture and instruction set, but trades size for speed by cutting the internal data bu ...

, H8
78K
*

Microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circu ...

SuperH SuperH (or SH) is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computing (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Hitachi and currently produced by Renesas. It is implemented by microcontrollers and microprocessors for embedded systems. At t ...

R32C / M32C/ M16C

V850 V850 is a 32-bit RISC CPU architecture produced by Renesas Electronics for embedded microcontrollers. It was designed by NEC as a replacement for their earlier NEC V60 family, and was introduced shortly before NEC sold their designs to Renesas ...

M32R The M32R is a 32-bit RISC instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Mitsubishi Electric for embedded microprocessors and microcontrollers. The ISA is now owned by Renesas Electronics Corporation, and the company designs and fabricates M32R im ...

br>RH850
etc. and th

family built on the

ARM architecture ARM (stylised in lowercase as arm, formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures for computer processors, configured ...

) * System LSIs (

System on a Chip A system on a chip or system-on-chip (SoC ; pl. ''SoCs'' ) is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or other electronic system. These components almost always include a central processing unit (CPU), memory ...

e.g
R-Car
*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*
Wireless Power
** ASICs

Microcontrollers

The RL78 MCU family

RL78 is the family name for a range of 16-bit microcontrollers. These were the first new MCU to emerge from the new Renesas Electronics company after the merger of NEC Electronics and Renesas Technology. These Microcontrollers incorporate the core features of the NEC 78K0R (150 nm MF2 flash process) and many familiar peripherals from legacy Renesas R8C microcontrollers. The RL78 core variants include the S1, S2, and S3 type cores which evolved from the NEC 78K0R core. The basic S1 core support 74 instructions, the S2 core adds register banking and supports 75 instructions, while the S3 core adds an on-chip multiplier / divider / multiple-accumulate and supports 81 instructions. The RL78 was developed to address extremely low power but highly integrated microcontroller applications, to this end the core offered a novel low power mode of operation called “snooze mode” where the ADC or serial interface can be programmed to meet specific conditions to wake the device from the extreme low power STOP mode of 0.52uA.

The RX MCU family

The RX, an acronym for Renesas Xtreme, is the family name for a range of 32-bit

s developed by Renesas, as opposed to the H family and the MC family, launched by Hitachi and Mitsubishi respectively. The RX family was launched in 2009 by Renesas Technology with the first product range designated the RX600 series and targeting applications such as metering, motor control, human–machine interfaces (HMI), networking, and industrial automation. Since 2009 this MCU family range has been enlarged with a smaller variant the RX200 series and also through enhanced performance versions. Key to the high performance of the microcontroller is the CISC architecture with high performance integrated flash memory enabling the central processing unit (CPU) to operate at very high frequency, 100 MHz, without requiring wait-states for the memory accesses resulting in performance up to 1.65 DMIPS/MHz.

The RA MCU family

The RA, an acronym for Renesas Advanced, is the family name for a range of 32-bit

s with Arm Cortex processor cores. The RA family's key features are the stronger embedded security, high-performance, and CoreMark ultra-low power operation. It also has a comprehensive partner ecosystem and Flexible Software Package for the users.

Microprocessors

The RZ Arm-based 32 & 64-bit family

The Renesas RZ family is a high-end 32 & 64 bit

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circu ...

s that is designed for the implementations of high resolution human machine interface (HMI), embedded vision
embedded artificial intelligence (e-AI)
real-time control, and industrial ethernet connectivity. It supports 6 protocols: PROFINET,

EtherNET/IP EtherNet/IP (IP = Industrial Protocol) is an industrial network protocol that adapts the Common Industrial Protocol (CIP) to standard Ethernet. EtherNet/IP is one of the leading industrial protocols in the United States and is widely used in a r ...

, POWERLINK, Modbus/TCP, EtherCAT, RT/IRT, TSN and Sercos III. The family includes, RZ/A and RZ/G for HMI, RZ/T for high-speed real-time control, and RZ/N for the network.

Corporate affairs

The largest stockholders and their ownership ratio of Renesas are as follows as of June 30, 2022. At the beginning of June 2022, Renesas announced its completion of an approx. 200 billion yen worth buyback of its shares. At the end of September 2013, Renesas issued new shares through third-party allotment resulting in INCJ becoming the new largest shareholder and non-parental controlling shareholder. In early May 2012, NEC transferred part of its stake in Renesas to its employee pension trust. As a result, the NEC pension fund held 32.4 percent of Renesas while NEC had 3.0 percent.

Manufacturing sites

As of 2022, the in-house wafer fabrication of the semiconductor device is conducted by Renesas Electronics and Renesas Semiconductor Manufacturing, a wholly owned subsidiary, operating five front-end plants in the following areas: * Naka, Takasaki, Saijo, Kawashiri, Palm Bay The back-end facilities, directly affiliated to Renesas Electronics and its subsidiaries, are located in: * Yonezawa, Oita, Nishiki, Beijing, Suzhou, Kuala Lumpur, Penang In May 2022 Renesas announced the re-opening of the "Kofu" Fab which will utilize the 300mm geometry for the fabrication of power semiconductors. The facility is scheduled to be online in 2024.https://www.renesas.com/jp/en/about/press-room/renesas-invest-and-restart-operation-kofu-factory-300mm-wafer-fab-dedicated-power-semiconductors

References

External links

*
Renesas Electronics Microcontrollers

Electronics Weekly: Renesas RX series microcontrollers – an overview

Bloomberg: Renesas Electronics America Expands Its RX Microcontroller
{{Authority control Microcontroller companies Japanese companies established in 2010 Companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Electronics companies established in 2010 Japanese brands Manufacturing companies based in Tokyo Multinational companies headquartered in Japan Semiconductor companies of Japan