R-Car S4 Starter Kit: Accelerating Software Development for Automotive Gateway Systems

11 July 2023 - 0 Comments

Renesas Electronics Corporation introduced a new development board designed specifically for automotive gateway systems. The R-Car S4 Starter Kit is a cost-effective and easily accessible development board that facilitates software development using the Renesas R-Car S4 system on-chip (SoC). This highly capable SoC offers superior computing performance and a range of communication features, making it ideal for both cloud communication and secure vehicle control. Engineers can leverage this kit to kick-start their initial evaluation of car servers, connected gateways, connectivity modules, and more, enabling rapid application development.

The R-Car S4 Starter Kit includes essential R-Car S4 interfaces such as Ethernet TSN switch and CAN FD, as well as memory components like 4GB (Gigabyte) of LPDDR4, 128GB of UFS (Universal Flash Storage), and 64MB (Megabyte) of Quad SPI flash memory. Furthermore, users can easily expand peripheral functions by utilizing expansion connectors and customize the hardware according to their specific requirements.

Moreover, Renesas provides the R-Car S4 Whitebox SDK, an open-source automotive development environment for the R-Car S4, which can be seamlessly combined with the R-Car S4 Starter Kit. This SDK encompasses free software and eliminates the need for complex license agreements. It includes sample software, test programs, and resource monitoring tools for OTA (Over-The-Air software updates), IPS (Intrusion Prevention System), and IDS (Intrusion Detection System) for network security, enabling various prototyping and evaluation activities. Users can utilize the sample software as a foundation for developing their own applications. This kit significantly reduces development time, energy consumption, and environmental impact.

Features

Eight 1.2 GHz Cortex A55 cores, one 1.0 GHz Cortex® R52 dual core (lock-step) and two 400 MHz RH850 G4MH dual cores (lock-step) deliver up to 27 kDMIPS application performance plus greater than 5.3 kDMIPS real-time performance
Abundant automotive interfaces including 16x CAN FD, 16x LIN, 8x SENT, 1x FlexRay, 2x 2-lane PCIe 4.0 allow a wide range of connectivity inside the vehicle
Integrated 3-port Ethernet TSN switch offers bandwidth of 3 x 2.5 Gbps to deliver fast and low-latency communication in the vehicle backbone and to the outside world
Incorporated 8MB SRAM to execute code on the RH850 G4MH core with low latency
Multiple hardware security modules (HSMs) and firewall IP provide enhanced security protection against cyber attacks
R-Car S4 is compliant to ISO-26262 and supports functional safety according to ASIL B and ASIL D