SuperH licenses SH4-202 to STMicroelectronics

SuperH technology designed in to next generation Consumer system-on-chip products

16 April, 2003 - SuperH, Inc., the leading supplier of multimedia RISC CPU cores, has today announced that STMicroelectronics N.V. (NYSE:STM) has extended its license for the SH-4, 32-bit RISC CPU core family by taking the SH4-202.

The SH4-202 will be used to further extend ST's market lead in a range of digital consumer system-on-chip (SoC) devices. This high performance core powers a new class of programmable SoC devices that move more functionality in to software. It will enable System OEMs to react rapidly to changes in the market by porting new applications that can be downloaded across a network and enables changes to multimedia codecs implementing the latest industry and market standards. The SH-4 integrates a 128-bit vector FPU (floating point unit) that delivers a high level of performance for processing audio, speech and graphics data.

"The SH4-202 will enable us to offer more powerful and flexible SoC solutions to our customers and will ensure a cost effective solution that maintains our leadership in the digital consumer market" commented Jean-Yves Larignon, Divisional Manager Micro Cores and Development Tools at ST.

The SH4-202 CPU core integrates 32K bytes of data cache and 16K bytes of instruction cache, a set of core peripherals (UART, clocks, interrupts and timers) and a standard debug port. The complete CPU core including the above peripherals is less than 5mm2 and is designed for high volume consumer applications.

"We are delighted to license this technology to ST" said Rick Chapman, VP Sales and Marketing at SuperH, "as this is a further demonstration of the leadership that the SuperH architecture holds in next generation consumer devices."