The Renesas Automotive Story in the History of the Microprocessor
Steven Van Singel · IEEE Micro · 2021
Renesas Electronics has a long history of providing high-quality and reliable microcontrollers to the automotive industry for many years. Renesas is the consolidation of the semiconductor units of Hitachi, Mitsubishi, and NEC Electronics. Hitachi and Mitsubishi's semiconductor businesses were divested from each company and merged into Renesas Technology in 2003. NEC Electronics’ semiconductor business was divested in 2010 and merged into a combined Renesas Electronics in 2010. Each company had developed various 8-bit and 16-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) architecture devices and 32-bit RISC architecture devices. Elements of all these previous architectures' devices are found in the newest Renesas devices available today, with the 32-bit RH850 being the highest selling automotive microcontroller for several years since its introduction.