RA8D1 Evaluation Kit

Overview

The EK-RA8D1 is an Evaluation Kit for Renesas RA8D1 MCU Group which are the industry’s first 32-bit graphics-enabled MCUs based on the Arm Cortex-M85 (CM85) core, delivering breakthrough performance of over 3000 Coremark points at 480 MHz and superior graphics capabilities that enable high-resolution displays and Vision AI applications.

The key features of the EK-RA8D1 board are categorized in three groups as follow:

MCU Native Pin Access

  • 480MHz Arm Cortex-M85 based RA8D1 MCU in 224 pins, BGA package

  • Native pin acces througgh 2 x 50-pin, and 2 x 40-pin male headers

  • MCU current measurement points for precision current consumption measurement

  • Multiple clock sources - RA8D1 MCU oscillator and sub-clock oscillator crystals, providing precision 20.000MHz and 32,768 Hz refeence clocks. Additional low precision clocks are avaialbe internal to the RA8D1 MCU

System Control and Ecosystem Access

  • USB Full Speed Host and Device (micro-AB connector)

  • Four 5V input sources

    • USB (Debug, Full Speed, High Speed)

    • External power supply (using surface mount clamp test points and power input vias)

  • Three Debug modes

    • Debug on-board (SWD)

    • Debug in (ETM, SWD and JTAG)

    • Debug out (SWD)

  • User LEDs and buttons

    • Three User LEDs (red, blue, green)

    • Power LED (white) indicating availability of regulated power

    • Debug LED (yellow) indicating the debug connection

    • Two User buttons

    • One Reset button

  • Five most popular ecosystems expansions

    • Two Seeed Grove system (I2C/I3C) connectors

    • One SparkFun Qwiic connector

    • Two Digilent Pmod (SPI, UART and I2C/I3C) connectors

    • Arduino (Uno R3) connector

    • MikroElektronika mikroBUS connector

  • MCU boot configuration jumper

Special Feature Access

  • Ethernet (RJ45 RMII interface)

  • USB High Speed Host and Device (micro-AB connector)

  • 512 Mb (64 MB) External Octo-SPI Flash (present in the MCU Native Pin Access area of the EK-RA8D1 board)

  • CAN FD (3-pin header)

RA8D1 Evaluation Kit

EK-RA8D1 Board Functional Area Definitions (Credit: Renesas Electronics Corporation)

Hardware

Detail Hardware feature for the RA8D1 MCU group can be found at RA8D1 Group User’s Manual Hardware

RA8D1 MCU group feature

RA8D1 Block diagram (Credit: Renesas Electronics Corporation)

Detail Hardware feature for the EK-RA8D1 MCU can be found at EK-RA8D1 - User’s Manual

Supported Features

The below features are currently supported on Zephyr OS for EK-RA8D1 board:

Interface

Controller

Driver/Component

GPIO

on-chip

gpio

MPU

on-chip

arch/arm

NVIC

on-chip

arch/arm

UART

on-chip

serial

CLOCK

on-chip

clock control

ENTROPY

on-chip

entropy

SPI

on-chip

spi

FLASH

on-chip

flash

PWM

on-chip

pwm

COUNTER

on-chip

counter

CAN

on-chip

canfd

I2C

on-chip

i2c

USBHS

on-chip

udc

DISPLAY

on-chip

LCDIF; MIPI-DSI. Tested with RTKMIPILCDB00000BE MIPI Display shields

ETHERNET

on-chip

ethernet

ADC

on-chip

adc

Note: for using Ethernet on RA8D1 board please set switch SW1 as following configuration:

SW1-1 PMOD1

SW1-2 TRACE

SW1-3 CAMERA

SW1-4 ETHA

SW1-5 ETHB

SW1-6 GLCD

SW1-7 SDRAM

SW1-8 I3C

OFF

OFF

OFF

OFF

ON

OFF

OFF

OFF

CAUTION: Do not enable SW1-4 and SW1-5 together

Other hardware features are currently not supported by the port.

Programming and Debugging

Applications for the ek_ra8d1 board configuration can be built, flashed, and debugged in the usual way. See Building an Application and Run an Application for more details on building and running.

Note: Only support from SDK v0.16.6 in which GCC for Cortex Arm-M85 was available. To build for EK-RA8M1 user need to get and install GNU Arm Embedded toolchain from https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/sdk-ng/releases/tag/v0.16.6

Flashing

Program can be flashed to EK-RA8D1 via the on-board SEGGER J-Link debugger. SEGGER J-link’s drivers are avaialbe at https://www.segger.com/downloads/jlink/

To flash the program to board

  1. Connect to J-Link OB via USB port to host PC

  2. Make sure J-Link OB jumper is in default configuration as describe in EK-RA8D1 - User’s Manual

  3. Execute west command

    west flash -r jlink

Debugging

You can use Segger Ozone (Segger Ozone Download) for a visual debug interface

Once downloaded and installed, open Segger Ozone and configure the debug project like so:

  • Target Device: R7FA8D1BH

  • Target Interface: SWD

  • Target Interface Speed: 4 MHz

  • Host Interface: USB

  • Program File: <path/to/your/build/zephyr.elf>

Note: It’s verified that debug is OK on Segger Ozone v3.30d so please use this or later version of Segger Ozone

References