Is Wankel and Renesis engine the same?

I don't believe so.

Wankel was the first companey to build rotery motors on a production level (but not the first to build the motor for fun), however there was one part that Wankel could not build that would withstand the test of time, The Apex Seals (closest comparesion to a piston ring in a regular motor) so the companey refused to out source the production of the seals, (note i will be getting to your question, one second) that is why the norton rotary motors failed, mazda rotery pickups failed, mazda rx 7 failed. if you ever buy an old vehicle with a rotery motor and it has low milage you will need to replace the motor. wankel could not build a motor that could meet the emmsision standards for the OBD2 requirements, so FORD pulled out the check book and gave wankel a check to buy it for MAZDA and then the briliant Men and Women perfected the rotery motor and the devision of MAZDA is, (take a guess) Renesis. so that is the answer (note keep the "R"'s high on your car, that is a high performance motor, and it will fail if you babby the car, drive aggressively.

Renesis is the engine in the RX-8. The Renesis is the latest version of the wankel engine from Mazda.. the wankel engine, more commonly known as the Rotary engine, was developed by Felix Wankel. His engine design only had one fault, the chatter marks made from the apex seals. He sold the rights to the engine to a lot of different buyers.. Mazda was the first and really the only manufacturer to fix the chatter problems by using carbon (correct me if i am wrong) for the material in the apex seals... Mazda is also the only company to continue on with putting the Rotary engine into production vehicles most popular car with the Rotary engine. The RX-7 ranging in years from 1979 to 1995 (in North America), and up to the year 2002 in Japan

forgot to add this link to more info on Dr. Felix Wankel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Wankel

Wankel is the first kind of Rotary engines, from the 10A to the 26B. Renesis is basically a engineered, redesigned engine of the Wankel 13B, with different ports, found on the rotor housing between each rotor than on the side of the engine housing ( forget the names, but you know what I mean), thus increasing the red line, the torque band and fuel mileage.

A Redline a day keeps the carbon away

The Renesis rotary as with all Mazda rotary engines, is a Wankel engine. The major difference between Renesis and older rotary engine designs is the side exhaust port (all previous production Mazda rotaries used a peripheral exhaust port alongside side intake ports, and other Wankel designs were fully peripheral ported), hence the factory designation 13B-MSP (Multi-Side Port). NSU, with whom Felix Wankel worked with on the KKM and DKM prototypes,eventually developed engines without the chatter mark problem but had extremely short lifespans due to bureaucratic meddling forcing the engine into production before it was ready.