Renesas
More info
- Released
- 2003
- Type
- Semiconductor company
- Predecessor
- Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric, NEC Electronics
Japan's microcontroller industry rolled into one company — and with it, a large share of the electronics in any given car.
Renesas was formed in 2003 when Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric pooled their semiconductor divisions, and in 2010 it merged with NEC Electronics. The inheritance included several home-grown processor architectures: SuperH from Hitachi, which powered Sega's Dreamcast, and V850 from NEC. The result was the world's largest maker of microcontrollers, with the car industry as its biggest customer.
Just how dependent that customer was became obvious after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake knocked out the Naka fab and carmakers worldwide had to cut production. Renesas has since bought breadth in the West: Intersil in 2017, IDT in 2019 and Dialog Semiconductor in 2021. Its main microcontroller rivals are NXP, Infineon and Microchip, the current owner of Atmel.