SuperH, Incorporated SH-4 Core is Supported by Microsoft's Windows CE .NET Operating System; Windows CE .NET Joins List of Operating Systems Supported by SH-4

Business Wire, Jan 7, 2002

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

CES 2002

SAN JOSE, Calif. & BRISTOL, UK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 7 2002

SuperH, Inc., a world leader in 32-bit and 64-bit embedded microprocessor (MPU) solutions, today announced at the Consumer Electronic Show, Las Vegas, that its SH-4 core is supported by the new release of the Windows CE .NET operating system from Microsoft Corp.

The SH-4 core supports a wide range of new applications based on Windows CE .NET. Among these are digital consumer convergence devices such as set-top boxes, advanced automotive systems and others.

The SH-4 core is a high performance 32-bit engine suitable for use in a wide variety of System on a Chip (SoC) implementations by licensees of the core. Already SH-4 core based products are finding homes in applications requiring a superior user experience, excellent Man Machine Interface and superb DSP and multimedia functionality, and today's announcement is expected to heighten interest from OEM's looking to use cutting edge cores to power digital consumer convergence devices of the future.

"As the embedded market grows, companies such as SuperH, Inc. aid the industry by creating highly advanced yet small footprint microprocessors for embedded data-intensive devices," said Keith White, senior director of the Embedded and Appliance Platforms Group at Microsoft. "SuperH's SH-4 core provides developers with a strong base to design SoCs and to deliver embedded devices that take advantage of the rich multimedia functionalities of Windows CE .NET."

Commenting on today's announcement, Rick Chapman, Vice President of Marketing and Sales at SuperH, Inc. said, "SuperH is fully committed to the Windows CE roadmap. We see that Windows CE .NET will allow our licensees to create embedded systems with strong multimedia functionality that consumers will require far into the future, using SoC implementations based on SuperH cores. We are pleased to continue a strong relationship with Microsoft and our partners to deploy SH-4 based systems running Windows CE .NET."

Licensees of the SH-4 core have found success with SH-4 based standard products in automotive, digital consumer and other embedded system applications. The Windows CE .NET release is expected to drive middleware enhancements for products using SH-4 core based SoCs.

Product details

The SH-4 core, a dual-issue superscalar engine, currently runs at up to 200 MHz and is being extended to 266 MHz during the first quarter of 2002. Thanks to the dual issue architecture, a compact 16-bit instruction set and a 32-bit fetch capability, the SH-4 can sustain execution of typical application code at over 1.5 instructions per cycle. This leads to a high performance at relatively low frequency and an advantage in power consumption. Furthermore, the employment of a rich 16-bit instruction set results in very aggressive code density and savings in memory footprints either on-chip or off-chip.

Along with the SH-4 core, SuperH, Inc. will license the SuperHyway(TM) SoC interconnect structure. The SuperHyway SoC interconnect supports an advanced Type 3 bus architecture that includes pipelined accesses, split transactions, out of order execution, and packet protocol structures. The SuperHyway is a VSI compliant interconnect solution that allows the connection of various VSI compliant IP cells with a minimum of effort in SoC implementations.

Another key component of SoC design is system level debug within a monolithic IC. SuperH, Inc. provides non-intrusive On-Chip debug facilities for runtime control and real-time trace within the SH-4 core itself and transactions on the SuperHyway interconnect facilitating comprehensive on-chip system level debug. SuperH, Inc. also provides bus models, IP verification tools and templates to facilitate SoC based system development.

About SuperH, Inc.

SuperH, Inc. develops and licenses RISC microprocessor cores of the SuperH(TM) family. The company licenses the SH-4 core and all subsequent SuperH cores to the open market, making it easier for customers worldwide to create powerful, cost-effective System-on-Chip (SoC) embedded microprocessor (MPU) designs. SuperH, Inc. will also complete final development of the 64-bit SH-5 processor and take over the development of the future SH-6 and SH-7 cores.

Product and service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.