Processor
Hitachi SH-4
A superscalar 32 bit RISC core with 16 bit instructions, a five-stage pipeline and an IEEE 754 floating-point unit doing single and double precision.
- Manufacturer
- Hitachi
- Architecture
- SuperH SH-4
- Introduced
- 1998
- Width
- 16 bit
- Word size
- 32 bit
- Frequency
- 100 MHz
- Frequency
- 200 MHz
- Frequency
- 33.3 MHz
- Frequency
- 50 MHz
- Core count
- 1
- Instruction set
- SuperH SH-4
- Record status
- approved
Figures
provisional A figure marked provisional is recorded but not accepted: its evidence is unsettled. It may rely on one source, an unconfirmed announcement, or a digit read from a damaged scan. The reason appears under the figure. The catalog shows the figure but never uses it in a multiplier. How records are judged.
| Metric | Value | Evidence | Basis | Method | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Native instruction rate cpu | 360 MIPS | Confirmed | Vendor-rated | Theoretical peak Stated by the vendor Stated by Sega as "360MIPS (core)" in the SH-4 features table, with no benchmark named. A vendor figure with no stated method. It is not a Dhrystone result and must never be compared with one, and because no benchmark is named it is not comparable with any other machine's instruction rate either, only with figures obtained the same way, of which this dataset has none. | |
| Peak FP32 rate cpu provisional | 1.4 GFLOP/s | Confirmed | Vendor-rated | Matrix instruction peak Stated by the vendor Stated as "1.4GFLOP (matrix multiplication)" in the SH-4 features table. Held provisional because the source does not state a precision. The FPU row directly above it offers both single and double IEEE 754, and a floating-point rate without its precision is the single most common way hardware comparisons go wrong. Recorded here as single precision on the strength of the operation named, which is an editorial reading rather than a citation, so the figure stays out of automatic multipliers until a source states the precision outright. | |
| Rated power consumption cpu | 1.5 W | Confirmed | Vendor-rated | Rated power Stated by the vendor The 200 MHz part, which is the speed grade the console fits. Hitachi states it as typical. The processor’s rating, not the console’s: Sega publishes no figure for the machine, and this answers a narrower question than the Amiga 1200’s 23 watts or the Mac mini’s 150 watts, which are whole-machine ratings. The scope keeps them in separate rows for exactly that reason. "Typical" is the manufacturer’s own hedge and nothing here was measured. |
Fitted to
Editorial notes
The first processor in this catalog with floating-point hardware whose vendor also publishes a rate for it. Its 16 bit instruction encoding on a 32 bit core is a code-density decision, not a word-size one. Internal clock is 200 MHz against a 100 MHz external bus and a 50 MHz peripheral clock, all derived from a 33.3 MHz PLL output.