Renesas Technology America Inc. has introduced the SH7785, a 32-bit, 600 MHz microprocessor based on an SH-4A superscalar CPU core. The MPU features on-chip cache and RAM and delivers 1 giga instructions per second (GIPS) performance for fast program execution. It also has a floating-point processing unit that achieves 4.2 giga floating-point operations per second (GFLOPS) performance for faster generation of 3-D graphics.
The newest member of the Renesas’s SuperH family targets automotive infotainment and other multimedia systems that process 2-D and 3-D color graphics, require powerful processing capabilities, and can benefit from the multifunction display unit built into the device.
Paul Sykes, marketing manager for Renesas’ automotive business unit, notes that the SH7785 offers 50% more speed than the 400 MHz SH7780. “Higher levels of performance and functionality are necessary to handle the rapidly increasing sophistication and expanding features of the latest multimedia systems,” he says. He cited as one example the ability to display an annotated 3-D picture of what a driver can see through the windshield, based on the vehicle's location, speed and direction. “Implementing such a feature requires considerable processing power and excellent display control.”
For those kinds of applications the MPU provides an on-chip LCD panel/multifunction display controller that can produce a superimposed display of up to three screens with SVGA resolution (800 x 600), four with WVGA (800 x 480 pixel), or six with 480 x 234 resolution, all in as many as 260,000 display colors. The display unit also provides transparency processing, and the ability to overwrite text information during streaming video playback.
The SH7785 has a 300 MHz, 32-bit dedicated bus that can connect to high-speed DDR2-SDRAM memory at a transfer rate of up to 2.4 GB/s. It also has a PCI bus controller for external PC peripherals.
Other features include a hardware data translation accelerator that can be used for moving-image playback; a direct memory access controller, an interrupt controller, a watchdog timer, serial interfaces, and an interface for connection to an audio CODEC IC. An on-chip debugging function lets engineers perform real-time debugging at up to 600 MHz, and an E10A-USB on-chip debugging emulator is available, along with other software development tools.
The SH7785 is upward-compatible with other SuperH processors, which saves development time by allowing the reuse of SuperH application code. Reusing code "is becoming an increasingly important consideration for system developers," Sykes says.
The infotainment MPU comes in a 19 x 19 mm, 436-pin BGA package approximately 20% smaller than the current SH7780 package.