Windows CE supported the Hitachi SuperH-3 and SuperH-4 processors. These were commonly abbreviated SH-3 and SH-4, or just SH3 and SH4, and the architecture series was known as SHx.
I’ll cover the SH-3 processor in this series, with some nods to the SH-4 as they arise. But the only binaries I have available for reverse-engineering are SH-3 binaries, so that’s where my focus will be.
Another architecture series by Raymond Chen, diving into some deep details about the SHx architecture.
The SH-4 was used in the Dreamcast, which could also run WinCE. It wasn’t built-in and not many games used it, because why would they? But the browser disk included WinCE, and maybe a few other games. I spent some time with the SH-4 docs working on a Dreamcast emulator, I recall that it was a very clean architecture with a compact ISA. Refreshing.
For those interested, there’s also the J-core project (http://j-core.org/), which is attempting to build an FPGA implementation of the SuperH series. They finished the SH-2 implementation and I think even booted Linux on it, but I think they’ve stalled working on SH-4. Not sure if the project is still alive.
Yeah, the SH architecture is a RISC yet resemble the 68000 very much. The SH4 is not yet in the public domain as there as still some unexpired patents laying around. It’s sad considering the SH architecture is completely abandoned by HITACHI, NEC and ST.
Isn’t SuperH now owned by Renesas?
RENESAS = HITACHI + NEC + MITSUBISHI
ST lost interest and throw away its shares in the venture.
The one processor I was always sad to see dropped was National Semiconductor’s 32xxx series. That was perhaps the most orthogonal CISC ISA ever designed. Assembly on that is really nice.
Going from Rob Landley’s blog it got pretty far along… but he got burned out on the work they were having him do on it. He seems to be making good progress on toybox at least.
And the j-core site itself has be inactive for years now, and the ML for many months…
Basically it seems RISC-V ate it’s cake…
I love these articles, they take me back to my 68000 days and trying to make sense of a universal assembly language.
Yes, I’m old!