The Sony Handheld Engine (or Sony HHE) was an ARM-based Application Processor, or SoC announced by

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

in July 2003. This mobile processor was specifically developed for the Sony CLIE series of

PDA PDA may refer to: Science and technology * Patron-driven acquisition, a mechanism for libraries to purchase books *Personal digital assistant, a mobile device * Photodiode array, a type of detector * Polydiacetylenes, a family of conducting poly ...

s, and was cutting-edge for the time, with a heavy focus on power-efficiency, and featuring numerous state-of-the-art features integrated into a single Application Processor IC. The Sony Handheld Engine processor (model CXD2230GA) was first used on the

Sony CLIÉ UX Series The Sony Clie UX series were premium multimedia PDAs announced by Sony in July 2003, running Palm OS (version 5). These devices were advertised as being a "personal entertainment communicator", a purpose not dissimilar to the Apple iPod Touch relea ...

. This processor was also used on some subsequent

CLIÉ The Sony CLIÉ (creativity, lifestyle, innovation, emotion, formerly communication, link, information and entertainment) is a series of personal digital assistants (PDAs) running the operating system (OS) ''Palm OS'', developed and marketed by S ...

models, specifically the TH55 and on the VZ90. This processor was advertised as having additional mobile capabilities, such as dynamic speed scaling for power efficiency, hardware acceleration for MPEG video playback, a

DSP DSP may refer to: Computing * Digital signal processing, the mathematical manipulation of an information signal * Digital signal processor, a microprocessor designed for digital signal processing * Yamaha DSP-1, a proprietary digital signal ...

for audio processing, a 2D graphics accelerator, as well as integrated camera,

MemoryStick The Memory Stick is a removable flash memory card format, originally launched by Sony in late 1998. In addition to the original Memory Stick, this family includes the Memory Stick PRO, a revision that allows greater maximum storage capacity and ...

, and LCD interfaces. This highly integrated combination of capabilities were not found in other mobile CPU's until several years later. The processor offered DVFM (Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Management), combining both dynamic clock speed and

dynamic voltage scaling Dynamic voltage scaling is a power management technique in computer architecture, where the voltage used in a component is increased or decreased, depending upon circumstances. Dynamic voltage scaling to increase voltage is known as overvolting; d ...

power saving features together, and this was advertised as being the world's first commercial implementation of such a feature. This processor also featured a 123 MHz

ARM9 ARM9 is a group of 32-bit RISC ARM processor cores licensed by ARM Holdings for microcontroller use. The ARM9 core family consists of ARM9TDMI, ARM940T, ARM9E-S, ARM966E-S, ARM920T, ARM922T, ARM946E-S, ARM9EJ-S, ARM926EJ-S, ARM968E-S, ARM996 ...

26 core with 64 Mbit of integrated eDRAM, and was produced on a 180 nm lithography process by Sony Computer Entertainment in their Nagasaki Chip

Fab Fab or FAB may refer to: Commerce * Fab (brand), a frozen confectionery * Fab (website), an e-commerce design web site * The FAB Awards, a food and beverage award * FAB Link, a European electricity link * Flavoured alcoholic beverage or alcopop, ...

Devices featuring the Sony HHE

Sony CLIÉ PEG-VZ90 The Clie PEG-VZ90 is a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) made by Sony. It ran the Palm OS (version 5) and was the last of the CLIÉ line. The PEG-VZ90 was released in 2004, only in Japan, and was made in the form of a Mini Tablet PC. It was the firs ...

Sony CLIÉ PEG-TH55 The Clié PEG-TH55 is a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) which was manufactured by Sony. The PEG-TH55 ran Palm OS (version 5) and featured a built-in camera, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth on non-US versions and an MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III o ...

References

ARM-based systems on chips Sony semiconductors System on a chip {{compu-mobile-stub

Devices featuring the Sony HHE

See also

References