Hitachi Guide

Hitachi, Ltd, designs and manufactures high-performance, power-efficient RISC microprocessors. The Hitachi SuperH RISC core uses a fixed 16-bit instruction length for improved efficiency, load-store architecture with 16 32-bit general-purpose registers, and a 5-stage pipeline that executes one instruction per clock cycle. Microsoft Windows CE .NET supports the SH-3, SH3-DSP, and SH-4 series. Hitachi optimizes each processor family for specific applications.

The Hitachi processors provide solutions for the following applications:

  • Platforms running wireless, consumer, and imaging applications
  • Voice over IP (VoIP) and other Digital Signal Processing (DSP) applications
  • Embedded, real-time systems for mass storage, automotive, industrial, and networking applications

The following table describes features of each processor family.

Processor family Description
SH-3 Hitachi SH-3 series microprocessors (SH7707/08/09/09A/18) deliver up to 173MIPS performance at 133MHz. They include an MMU and various on-chip modules such as IrDA, SmartCard, real-time clock, serial communication interface, on-chip debugging, and power down. These microprocessors typically are used for Handheld PCs (H/PCs), wireless communication products, and other portable applications where efficient power management is essential for long battery life.
SH3-DSP The SH3-DSP (SH7729) is often chosen for Voice over IP (VoIP) applications. This chip combines a 32-bit RISC CPU and DSP, 16KB of X/Y RAM, and on-chip debugging modules. It delivers 173MIPS or 266MOPS at 133MHz. Hitachi has also developed middleware for the SH-DSP and SH3-DSP for telephony applications.
SH-4 The SH-4 (SH7750) is one of the industry's highest performance embedded RISC processors, achieving 360MIPS at 200MHz. Despite its speed, the SH7750 also provides low power consumption, so it is used in multimedia products such as H/PCs, set-top boxes, and car navigation systems. The SH7750's speed also makes the microprocessor useful for network modem, portable communication, and thin client products.

Hitachi has licensed the SuperH architecture to ST Microelectronics, Sony, Epson, and NTT.

See Also

About Supported Microprocessors | SH-3 Calling Sequence Specification | SH3-DSP Calling Sequence Specifications | SH-4 Calling Sequence Specification | SHx Inline Assembly Language | SHx Series Assembler Directives

 Last updated on Thursday, April 08, 2004

© 1992-2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.