Renesas R-Car S4 Kit: Gateway System Development

Renesas Electronics, a leading global provider of semiconductor solutions (TSE: 6723), has unveiled the R-Car S4 Starter Kit, a cutting-edge development board tailored for automotive gateway systems. This cost-effective and user-friendly board is specifically designed to facilitate software development on the Renesas R-Car S4 System-on-Chip (SoC), which boasts exceptional computing power and a wide range of communication features for cloud-based communication and secure vehicle control. In comparison to the existing R-Car S4 reference board, this new Starter Kit offers a more affordable and accessible option, creating a comprehensive development environment with integrated evaluation boards and software. It empowers engineers to seamlessly initiate preliminary assessments of automotive servers, internet gateways, and connectivity modules, accelerating rapid application development.

Akeshi Fuse, Head of Marketing and Business Development, High Performance Computing, Analog Power Solutions Group at Renesas, expressed his confidence, stating, "The R-Car S4 SoC has gained significant traction as a gateway SoC supporting E/E architecture evolution. We understand our customers' need for a cost-effective and versatile development environment that can be easily adopted by their design teams, and this development board fulfills those requirements. Our goal is to help our customers expedite their product development journey."

The R-Car S4 Starter Kit incorporates essential R-Car S4 interfaces, such as Ethernet TSN switch and CAN FD, along with generous storage capacity including 4GB of LPDDR4, 128GB of UFS (Universal Flash Storage), and 64MB of Quad SPI flash memory. Additionally, users can effortlessly expand peripheral functionality by utilizing the provided extension connectors and customize the hardware to suit their individual needs.

Moreover, Renesas offers the R-Car S4 Whitebox SDK, an open-source automotive development environment for the R-Car S4 SoC that seamlessly integrates with the R-Car S4 Starter Kit. This SDK comprises user-friendly and freely accessible software components, eliminating the complexities associated with licensing agreements. With a collection of sample software, test programs, resource monitoring tools for Over-The-Air (OTA) downloads, and advanced Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) and Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) for network security, the SDK enables diverse prototyping and evaluation possibilities. Users can leverage the sample software as a foundation to develop their own applications. By shortening development cycles and minimizing power consumption, this kit effectively reduces the environmental impact of the design process.