SuperH

The SuperH processor family is a family of processors based around the SH core. The SuperH core is RISC based and found in a large number of embedded systems.

The SuperH Family was first developed by Hitachi as successor of the H8 Family, but was outsourced to the new formed SuperH Inc. owned by Hitachi and STMicroelectronics. SuperH Inc now sells the designs of the CPU Cores, just as the main competioners ARM and MIPS do.

The Later Designs add a SIMD Instuction Set called SHmedia and a more compact Instruction Set called SHcompact, similar to the Thumb Instruction Set of ARM.

The older Designs are now supported and sold by Renesas (http://www.renesas.com/).

The Family includes:

• SH-1 - 32Bit with maximum of 20 MHz
• SH-2 - 32Bit with up to 28.7MHz (Used e.g. in the Sega Saturn))
• SH-3 - 32Bit with up to 200 MHz. This spring introduced a MMU to the SH Family (Used in a lot of Windows CE devices)
• SH-4 - 32Bit Core with a 128Bit Vector FPU (Used e.g. in the Dreamcast)
• SH-5 - 64Bit Core

Examples include ST Microelectronics's ST40 or the Hitachi's SH-4.

External links:

• http://www.superh.com/
• http://www.renesas.com/