Made-in-Japan Microprocessors

by Noriko Takezaki

Sega saturn vs. nintendo64! When you hear these names, you probably think first of the rivalry between competing game machines. But the underlying competition goes deeper than the fierce battle for sales in the computer game market; it has its roots in the microprocessor market.

The Sega Saturn incorporates Hitachi's SH-2 microprocessor, one of Hitachi's 32-bit RISC (reduced instruction set computing) chips. The Nintendo64, on the other hand, has adopted the VR4300, one of NEC's VR series of 64-bit MIPS RISC microprocessors.

The Hitachi SH vs. NEC VR showdown was evident at the November 1996 COMDEX in Las Vegas. These two made-in-Japan microprocessors played an important role in the market debut of handheld personal computers (HPCs). Hitachi's SH-3 was incorporated into the HPCs developed by Casio Computer, Compaq Computer, Hewlett-Packard, and LG Electronics, while the HPC developed by NEC employs the NEC VR4101. Because they both support Windows CE, Hitachi's SH series and NEC's VR series chips are expected to be key players in the expanding information appliance business field.

The Hitachi SH series
Having faced a tough time in the DRAM (dynamic random access memory) market, where product prices have declined drastically, Japanese semiconductor manufacturers are shifting their business emphasis to embedding their products into information appliances. The pioneer in this business field is Hitachi, which started development of the first chip of its SH series, the SH-1, in 1990.

In 1996, Hitachi's SH series was the leader in the world's RISC chip market, with a 35.3% market share, followed by MIPS Technologies chips with a 29.4% share (according to US trade journal Inside The New Computer Industry, January 1997). Within its overall SH business, Hitachi has so far acquired more than 1,000 design "wins" (products that have adopted an SH chip).

"SH-1 was the world's first 32-bit single-chip RISC microcontroller that was superior to the conventional chips in terms of MIPS per watt of power [that is, limiting power dissipation while maintaining high processing speed]," says Tsugio Makimoto, executive managing director of Hitachi. "We have deliberately chosen a market segment that differs from the Intel-dominated market. While Intel has been pursuing the development of high-end products for high-speed processing, we have focused on the development of low-power, low-cost chips that can achieve high performance. We have been anticipating the growth of the embedded business in the information appliance field."

Hitachi is acknowledged as one of the top three semiconductor manufacturers in the Japanese market, but in the world semiconductor market its name was hardly known. To expand its business on a global scale, Hitachi longed to have its chips support the world's dominant OSes (operating systems).

That chance arrived for Hitachi in 1992. Sufficiently impressed by the SH-1's balance of low power dissipation/high processing speed, Microsoft approached Hitachi for the development of a new SH chip that would support Microsoft's new OS - then code-named Pegasus, today known as Windows CE (Microsoft's new OS platform for communications, entertainment, and mobile-computing devices).

Hitachi worked diligently to develop a chip that met Microsoft's requirements, but initially Microsoft was hesitant to select it as one of the Windows CE chips because the made-in-Japan SH architecture was not popular on the world market. However, Casio Computer, which was working with Microsoft to develop an HPC that would support Windows CE, backed the Hitachi SH chip. Casio and Hitachi have been working closely for a long time, and Casio was using SH chips for many of its key products, such as the QV-10A digital camera.

In 1995, Hitachi released the awaited SH-3 chip. The SH-3 offers 60 MIPS (million instructions per second)/400 mW (milliwatts), and it features compact program code size and efficient use of memory (owing to the 16-bit fixed-length instruction set). In addition to Windows CE, the SH-3 supports such OSes as VxWorks, pSOS/ stem, and OS-9/DAVID.

"Having chips that support Windows CE gives us a chance to expand our business opportunities," says Hideo Inayoshi, office manager of Hitachi's 32-bit microcomputer development department. "We are aware that we cannot depend only on our pieces at hand for future business expansion. Having Microsoft CE will enable us to expand our activities abroad, particularly in the US."

To promote its chip business in the US market, Hitachi has held seminars in New York and San Francisco. Hitachi's US subsidiary, Hitachi America, meanwhile, is shifting its semiconductor business focus to SH chips. To support related sales and field engineering in the US, Hitachi plans to dispatch several microcomputer staff members to the subsidiary this year.

Hitachi, however, does not expect that support of Windows CE by the SH chip will produce results quickly; Windows CE, after all, has not yet become a popular product application OS. "For the time being, we intend to work for the involvement of more and more independent software and hardware vendors to establish the Windows CE family infrastructure," says Inayoshi.

Even within the Japanese market, Hitachi's SH chips are certain to face tougher competition. The current dominance of SH chips in Japan owes much to the sales of the Sega Saturn game machine. Recently, however, Sega has been struggling in the game market, while sales of Nintendo64 and Sony PlayStation are booming.

Initially Microsoft was hesitant to select [Hitachi's microprocessor] as one of the Windows CE chips because the made-in-Japan SH architecture was not popular on the world market.

The fixed MIPS architecture places some design restrictions on its engineers, however, so NEC has also been introducing its 32-bit V800 series RISC chips for manufacturers who need a customized, low-cost chip. The V800 series uses NEC's own proprietary architecture. A key product in the V800 series is the V850 chip, which achieves 38 MIPS/270 mW and has a DSP (digital signal processing) function. So far, the VR and V800 series chips have about 500 design "wins."

One of the reasons behind its development of the V800 series was NEC's deep concern about the future expansion of information appliance product lineups. NEC engineers realized that they needed to accumulate technological expertise to prepare for the development of next-generation products, and not rely solely on the advantage derived from using the MIPS architecture in its RISC chip series. To this end, they have been developing a new model of the V800 series, to be released within 1997, that will feature about 1,000 MOPS (million operations per second).

To further enhance its product development capabilities, NEC has been reinforcing middleware development. Last year, NEC formed a department of about 40 engineers dedicated to developing middleware. Although NEC says that it will still seek the help of outside partners, its dependence on outside assistance is low in comparison with other Japanese semiconductor manufacturers, including Hitachi.

"Merely developing chips isn't enough anymore," says Hiroaki Kaneko, an engineering manager in NEC's application software engineering department. "Rather, semiconductor engineers should be more aggressively involved with middleware and application development, particularly in the information appliance field."

As part of its middleware R&D, NEC has set up an unprecedented task force in the semiconductor division: one intended not for the development of new chips, but for the development of application platforms.

In the conventional semiconductor development process, the chip is developed first, then introduced to potential customers for embedding into specific applications. What NEC's new task force is doing, however, is first proposing product application ideas to the retail product manufacturers, and becoming involved with the manufacturers' product design process from the beginning.

The team is currently working on development of a hardware reference platform, even before NEC has developed the chip to incorporate into it. The platform, called "Web Panel," is being developed with a Java virtual machine environment; it will have a "Java chip" incorporated into it within a year.

"We believe the Java virtual machine will be a key environment for next-generation products," said Kozy Kubota, assistant manager of this NEC project. "We want to make products easy to use, even for a lay person, and the Java virtual machine environment gives us potentials that existing Internet-related appliances cannot realize."

The NEC team members have visited home appliance, computer hardware, and computer software manufacturers in Japan and the US to promote Web Panel and its possible applications: as an effective platform for online magazines or communications. Now, they are being asked by manufacturers to develop more detailed business strategies for Web Panel applications, according to Kubota.

Mitsubishi's M32R/D chip
Like NEC, Mitsubishi Electric has been working on implementation of Java for its 32-bit M32R/D RISC chip. This chip, the world's first microprocessor with on-chip DRAM, can achieve 52 MIPS/200 mW. It supports such real-time OSes as pSOS, VxWorks, and µTRON. For Internet browser development, Mitsubishi has been working with Access in Japan and diba in the US. The M32R/D chip already has about 100 design "wins," mainly for application to such information appliances as Internet terminals, PDAs (personal digital assistants), and digital still cameras.

According to Mitsubishi, the M32R/D chip enables better performance - a two- to six-fold increase over a chip with external DRAM - owing to the wide, 128-bit on-chip memory bus. In addition, the on-chip DRAM helps reduce power dissipation to one-half to one-third that of a conventional chip, since the on-chip structure reduces power-consuming communication time between the CPU and the various memories. The chip also incorporates a DSP unit.

Hitachi's SH series and NEC's VR series chips are expected to be key players in the expanding information appliance business field.

RISCy business
The RISC chip war in Japan is expected to grow even fiercer this year. According to an industry source, a dark horse, Sony, has approached Toshiba regarding joint development within the year of a RISC chip to feature 1,000 MIPS.

The advancement of middleware - to what extent software can realize the functions of hardware, and how chip manufacturers proceed with development - will be a decisive factor for
leading the RISC chip business hereafter. More and more, semiconductor manufacturers are finding they have to consider the software side of the equation to successfully market their chips.

Example of design "wins"

For more information about the SH series microprocessors, see the products section (tech_prod/index.htm) of Hitachi's website at http://www.halsp.hitachi.com/. For more on NEC's VR and V800 chips, go to http://www.nec.com/ and click on the "products" icon.


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