is a Japanese
semiconductor manufacturer headquartered in
Tokyo,
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 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
A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical conductivity value falling between that of a conductor, such as copper, and an insulator, such as glass. Its resistivity falls as its temperature rises; metals behave in the opposite way. ...
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 circuits,
memory devices, and
SoCs.
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, 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 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 ...
, with their ownership percentage of 55 and 45 in order. The DRAM businesses of the three had become part of
Elpida Memory, 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. 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, 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
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 ...
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 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 was completed.
In September 2016, Renesas announced that it would acquire
Intersil for $3.2 billion. In February 2017, Renesas completed the acquisition.
In April 2017, Renesas unveiled a
self-driving concept car 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. 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 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 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 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 and
Tejas Networks
Tejas Networks is an optical, broadband and data networking products company based in India. The company designs develops and sells its products to telecom service providers, internet service providers, utilities, security and government entities i ...
, both
Tata Group 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 from
Vietnam 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 ...
s:
RL78RA R8C,
H878K
*
Microprocessors:
SuperHR32C / M32C/ M16C V850,
M32Rbr>
RH850etc. 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
LSI LSI may refer to:
Science and technology
* Large-scale integration, integrated circuits with tens of thousands of transistors
* Latent semantic indexing, a technique in natural language processing
* LSI-11, an early large-scale integration com ...
s (
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
microcontroller
A microcontroller (MCU for ''microcontroller unit'', often also MC, UC, or μC) is a small compute