Research Triangle Park, NC — (press release excerpt) — Red Hat, Inc. and SuperH, Inc. today announced that they are working together on a compiler for the new 64 bit SuperH SH-5 processor. The Red Hat GNUPro compiler is a commercial software development suite of tools built around the open source GNU standard. The joint work with Red Hat is part of SuperH's commitment to using, and making available, open source software for the SuperH architecture.

The SuperH architecture is ideally suited to digital consumer convergence products and targeted at service providers, system manufacturers and semiconductor suppliers. Red Hat is working with SuperH to develop open source solutions across the SuperH architecture to deliver powerful, reliable and affordable solutions ideal for the mass consumer device market. The SuperH architecture, including the new 64 bit SH-5 core architecture, will be supported by the Red Hat Embedded Linux Developer Suite enabling developers to gain access to the latest software upgrades as they become available and to Red Hat Open Source Support.

The SuperH architecture is designed for digital consumer applications such as set-top boxes, portable multi-media appliances, games consoles, and many other 'infotainment' products. Automotive applications include car information systems, motor control systems and satellite navigation products. Telecoms applications include video telephones, home gateway systems and smart phone applications.

GNU is a wide-range of open source-based, freely downloadable software programs that are licensed under the terms of the General Public License (GPL). A subset of GNU is its development tools, which include command-line-based compiler and debugger technology. The source code for these tools, while freely available, generally does not include pre-built binaries. It has not been subjected to formal testing, nor is there a guaranteed mechanism for new platform support.

Red Hat GNUPro provides a commercial grade toolsuite based on the GNU standard. This toolsuite is built on a standard reference base and delivered with pre-configured binaries. GNUPro features include a graphical interface, compiler, debugger, linker, loader and utilities. The development of extensions and enhancements to GNUPro are driven by Red Hat engineers and customers, then put through a rigorous test and release process. Through collaboration between Red Hat and its partners, GNUPro is extended to support next-generation processor platforms ensuring that Red Hat supports customers' long-term product or application development plans. With real-time response and on-going maintenance, Red Hat ensures that its customers' engineering teams aren't forced to lose development time because of tool-related issues.

The SuperH family of 32-bit and 64-bit processor cores is ideally suited for digital consumer, automotive and telecommunications applications. These applications typically require a highly integrated system-on-chip solution that includes a powerful embedded processing engine and can run a wide variety of application software on industry-standard operating systems and middleware. SuperH is a RISC microprocessor technology based on an original Hitachi architecture. To date, six cores have been released: the SH-1, SH-2, SH-3, SH2-DSP, SH-DSP and SH-4. SuperH processors are used in many fields of industry including information systems and digital consumer products such as set-top boxes, factory automation systems and digital cameras. Further information about SuperH products can be found on www.superh.com.

 
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