Sega Aurora

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Sega Aurora (Not exactly the same as the "Sega System SP") is a highly integrated hardware platform that Sega Sammy developed to power amusement devices like their pachinko/pachislot machine displays and arcade games and to also be sublicensed to outside manufacturers who are looking to build multimedia portable and embedded systems. It was developed by SI Electronics Inc, a former Sammy subsidiary. It was introduced in 2004 and is primarily based on an enhanced Dreamcast hardware. The name "Aurora" derives from a top secret code name that Sega Enterprises, Ltd. used during the development of Sega Saturn in the mid 1990s. [1] As SI Electronics left Sammy Holdings after being acquired by Kaga Electronics in July 1, 2008, they made the "System Board Y2" platform in 2009, mainly known for the game "King of Fighters 2002: Ultimate Match".

Dreamcast video game console

The Dreamcast is a home video game console released by Sega on November 27, 1998 in Japan, September 9, 1999 in North America, and October 14, 1999 in Europe. It was the first in the sixth generation of video game consoles, preceding Sony's PlayStation 2, Nintendo's GameCube and Microsoft's Xbox. The Dreamcast was Sega's final home console, marking the end of the company's 18 years in the console market.

Sega Japanese video game developer and publisher and subsidiary of Sega Sammy Holdings

Sega Games Co., Ltd. is a Japanese multinational video game developer and publisher headquartered in Tokyo. Its international branches, Sega of America and Sega Europe, are respectively headquartered in Irvine, California and London. Sega's arcade division, once part of Sega Corporation, has existed as Sega Interactive Co., Ltd. since 2015. Both companies are subsidiaries of Sega Holdings Co., Ltd., which is in turn a part of Sega Sammy Holdings.

Sega Saturn Video game console

The Sega Saturn is a 32-bit fifth-generation home video game console developed by Sega and released on November 22, 1994 in Japan, May 11, 1995 in North America, and July 8, 1995 in Europe. The successor to the successful Sega Genesis, the Saturn has a dual-CPU architecture and eight processors. Its games are in CD-ROM format, and its game library contains several arcade ports as well as original games.

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Aurora is made of a Renesas System-on-Chip named SH3707 which incorporates the technologies of partner companies that worked on the Dreamcast and related systems. Its CPU core is Renesas SH-4 based technology with FPU clocked at 300 MHz. Its GPU core is a PowerVR MBX accelerator with VGP co-processor running at 150 MHz. On-chip audio and video hardware supply the system with the capability for ADPCM and MPEG1/2/4 respectively.

Central processing unit Central component of any computer system which executes input/output, arithmetical, and logical operations

A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor or main processor, is the electronic circuitry within a computer that carries out the instructions of a computer program by performing the basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, and input/output (I/O) operations specified by the instructions. The computer industry has used the term "central processing unit" at least since the early 1960s. Traditionally, the term "CPU" refers to a processor, more specifically to its processing unit and control unit (CU), distinguishing these core elements of a computer from external components such as main memory and I/O circuitry.

Graphics processing unit specialized electronic circuit; graphics accelerator

A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobile phones, personal computers, workstations, and game consoles. Modern GPUs are very efficient at manipulating computer graphics and image processing. Their highly parallel structure makes them more efficient than general-purpose central processing units (CPUs) for algorithms that process large blocks of data in parallel. In a personal computer, a GPU can be present on a video card or embedded on the motherboard. In certain CPUs, they are embedded on the CPU die.

PowerVR is a division of Imagination Technologies that develops hardware and software for 2D and 3D rendering, and for video encoding, decoding, associated image processing and DirectX, OpenGL ES, OpenVG, and OpenCL acceleration. PowerVR also develops AI accelerators called Neural Network Accelerator (NNA).

Aurora System Specifications

SuperH is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computing (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Hitachi and currently produced by Renesas. It is implemented by microcontrollers and microprocessors for embedded systems.

In computing, floating point operations per second is a measure of computer performance, useful in fields of scientific computations that require floating-point calculations. For such cases it is a more accurate measure than measuring instructions per second.

Instructions per second (IPS) is a measure of a computer's processor speed. For CISC computers different instructions take different amounts of time, so the value measured depends on the instruction mix; even for comparing processors in the same family the IPS measurement can be problematic. Many reported IPS values have represented "peak" execution rates on artificial instruction sequences with few branches and no cache contention, whereas realistic workloads typically lead to significantly lower IPS values. Memory hierarchy also greatly affects processor performance, an issue barely considered in IPS calculations. Because of these problems, synthetic benchmarks such as Dhrystone are now generally used to estimate computer performance in commonly used applications, and raw IPS has fallen into disuse.

Sega System SP

It is different from the Sega System SP, which had a common misconception of being the same system as the Aurora hardware, even though they were both based on a similar CPU; however, those CPUs had different brand names and frequency speeds. The System SP was optimized cost-wise as in being a simpler iteration of the NAOMI hardware. In simple terms, the SP is akin to Sega NAOMI with the following integrated hardware features:

See also

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ARM7 is a group of older 32-bit RISC ARM processor cores licensed by ARM Holdings for microcontroller use. The ARM7 core family consists of ARM700, ARM710, ARM7DI, ARM710a, ARM720T, ARM740T, ARM710T, ARM7TDMI, ARM7TDMI-S, ARM7EJ-S. The ARM7TDMI and ARM7TDMI-S were the most popular cores of the family. Since ARM7 cores were released from 1993 to 2001, they are no longer recommended for new IC designs; instead ARM Cortex-M or ARM Cortex-R cores are preferred.

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V850 is the trademark name for a 32-bit RISC CPU architecture of Renesas Electronics for embedded microcontrollers, introduced in early 90's by NEC and still being developed as of 2018.
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IEBus Communication bus specification

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IEBus is also used in some vending machines, which major customer is Fuji Electric. Each button on the vending machine has an IEBus ID, i.e. has a controller.
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Xbox technical specifications

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References

  1. ↑ "Expanding the Dreamcast Collection Part 5: The Sega System SP". The Dreamcast Junkyard. 2017-03-17. Retrieved 2018-10-23.
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