Renesas puts smart home operating system into play

Renesas is looking to combine all its software for the smart home on one real time operating system, which may be developed in-house or acquired.

"Renesas has decided to have more focus on the stable microcontroller business," said Shigeo Mizugaki senior VP and member of the board of Renesas, speaking at the Electronica trade show in Germany. "We are intending to expand our technologies to the smart society. Renesas will prepare the HMI and interoperability with the stacks such as sensors, HVAC air conditioning and Ethernet." This will be integrated under one RTOS.

"We are now starting discussions to get the capabilities with third parties," he said. The company has renegotiated its short term debt and obtained additional funding from four Japanese banks and major stakeholders which will give cash for acquisitions. "Getting the money for new growth means acquisition is a strong option," he said.

As the largest microcontroller supplier with 27% market share across industrial, home and automotive the choice of a single operating system across multiple markets will be significant for embedded software developers.

The move also demonstrates a move to the 32bit RX family of microcontrollers combined with analog peripherals and Renesas' MONOS embedded flash which has already taped out at 40nm and a 28nm version is in development and can scale further, says Mizugaki.

http://www.renesas.com

This article originally appeared on EE Times Europe.