Dreamcast-On-A-Chip Technology Unveiled

Officials from Japanese semi-conductor manufacturer Renesas Technology have revealed plans to replicate the technologies used in Sega’s Dreamcast console onto a single core microchip. The proposed SH3707 chip will combine both an advanced SuperH core and a PowerVR graphics core – the core components of the original Dreamcast. The new SH3707 will in fact use a 540 MIPS/2.1 gigaflops engine, with a 64-bit interface to memory, which is actually faster than the Dreamcast. Indeed, the target specification of the platform is a graphical ability roughly twice that of the Dreamcast. The company claims that the chip was designed with game consoles in mind and the applications for a miniaturized version of the Dreamcast are obvious. "Our goal was to accomplish second-generation (console) performance and first-generation cost," said Mitsuhiro Miyazaki, the project deputy manager for Renesas. Sega’s involvement in the project at the moment seem unlikely, though, and it appears that Renesas are only using the Dreamcast as a comparison-point in its attempts to interest possible video game manufacturers.