Conference ricks::dechips

683.0. "SuperH, Mips, Videogames, cars" by ROM01::OLD_CIPOLLA (Bruno Cipolla) Tue Apr 22 1997 10:13

    +  MENTOR & HITACHI TEAM UP TO PROVIDE SUPPORT FOR SUPERH RISC
    
    Wilsonville, Oregon-based Mentor Graphics Corp has declared its
    support for Hitachi Ltd's 32-bit embedded SuperH RISC
    processor, by integrating it with its own Seamless
    Co-Verification Environment, a hardware and software-based
    support tool for developing complex embedded systems. The
    package enables users to run applications or embedded software
    against a hardware simulation. The integration is meant to help
    designers shorten the design cycle by enabling them to verify
    the hardware-software interface of their embedded core ASICs
    before they commit to a silicon implementation. For Hitachi,
    the SuperH processor represents one of its biggest sellers,
    having shipped some 12 million by January last year (CI No
    2,836). One of its biggest buyers is Sega Enterprises Ltd, who
    uses it in its Saturn games console. However, more recently
    Sega has started to lose market share to its main rivals Sony
    Corp and Nintendo Corp, who both use MIPS RISC chips for their
    flagship machines. Mentor Graphics is however, according to Jim
    Kenney, marketing manager for the firm's Co-Design Business
    Unit, supporting the SuperH "because of high customer demand
    within the Japanese automotive industry," and has seen no call
    at all for its support tool from the games industry. Outside of
    Japan, its main source of SuperH-based business has been from
    the telecommunications industry. The company also said that the
    SuperH is one of 20 different embedded processors it supports,
    which include MIPS chips from NEC Corp, Toshiba Corp and LSI
    Logic Inc, as well as Intel Corps X86-ARM chips and Motorola
    Corp's 683xx. Hitachi for its part, has said it hopes to push
    the SuperH into other markets, and says it is gaining ground in
    car navigation devices and digital cameras, of which it claims
    70% to 80% currently use the SuperH. It also pointed out that
    five out of seven vendors of hand-held devices are using the
    chip.