Renesas has begun shipping R-Car X5H silicon samples, evaluation boards, and the RoX Whitebox SDK to selected customers and partners. The company noted that it plans to showcase AI-powered multi-domain demonstrations of the platform at CES 2026.
Renesas advances its SDV strategy with the expansion of its fifth-generation R-Car platform, built around a multi-domain automotive SoC
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Renesas advances SDV roadmap with 3nm R-Car Gen 5 platform
New Products | December 22, 2025
By eeNews Europe
AUTOMOTIVE SDV RENESASEMBEDDED DESIGN
Renesas Electronics has taken another step in its software-defined vehicle (SDV) strategy with the expansion of its fifth-generation R-Car platform, built around a new multi-domain automotive SoC and a broader end-to-end development environment. According to the
company, the move is aimed squarely at accelerating the design of highly integrated, AI-driven vehicle architectures.
For
eeNews Europe readers, the announcement is relevant because it highlights how leading silicon vendors are converging ADAS, infotainment, and gateway workloads onto a single, safety-capable compute platform. It also offers insight into how open software stacks and early silicon access are being used to shorten automotive development cycles.
3nm multi-domain compute for SDVs
At the core of the platform is the R-Car X5H, the latest device in the Gen 5 R-Car family. According to Renesas, it is the industry’s first multi-domain automotive SoC manufactured on a 3nm process. The company indicates that the device is designed to run advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), in-vehicle infotainment (IVI), and gateway functions concurrently on a single chip.
The company says the move to an advanced process node delivers up to 35% lower power consumption compared with previous 5nm solutions, while significantly increasing compute density. The SoC targets centralized SDV architectures, combining high performance with mixed-criticality support so that safety-related and non-safety workloads can coexist without compromise.
The R-Car X5H delivers up to 400 TOPS of AI performance, with the option to scale further using chiplet-based accelerators that can boost AI throughput by four times or more. Graphics performance reaches the equivalent of 4 TFLOPS, supported by a CPU complex of 32 Arm Cortex-A720AE cores and six Cortex-R52 lockstep cores with ASIL D capability, providing more than 1,000k DMIPS.
RoX Whitebox SDK targets faster development
Alongside the new silicon, Renesas says it is expanding its R-Car Open Access (RoX) development platform with the RoX Whitebox Software Development Kit. The SDK is positioned as an open, scalable environment that integrates hardware, operating systems, middleware, and tools needed for next-generation SDV development.
The Whitebox SDK is built on Linux, Android and the XEN hypervisor, with additional support for AUTOSAR, EB corbos Linux, QNX, Red Hat and SafeRTOS through partners. Out of the box, developers can begin work on ADAS, L3/L4 autonomy, intelligent cockpit and gateway applications.
An integrated AI and ADAS software stack supports real-time perception and sensor fusion, while generative AI and large language models are intended to enable more advanced human–machine interfaces in future AI-driven cockpits, the company notes. The SDK also incorporates production-grade software from partners including Candera, DSP Concepts, Nullmax, Smart Eye, STRADVISION and ThunderSoft.
Sampling and demos
Renesas has begun shipping R-Car X5H silicon samples, evaluation boards, and the RoX Whitebox SDK to selected customers and partners. The company noted that it plans to showcase AI-powered multi-domain demonstrations of the platform at CES 2026.
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