Ricoh 5A22

The Ricoh 5A22 is a microprocessor produced by Ricoh for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) video game console. The 5A22 is based on the 8/16-bit CMD/GTE 65c816, itself a version of the WDC 65C816 (used in the Apple IIGS personal computer). It has an 8-bit data bus, a 16-bit accumulator, a 24-bit address bus, and is based on the MOS Technology 6502 family of processors.

Major features

Ricoh 5A22

In addition to the 65C816 CPU core, the 5A22 contains support hardware, including:

• Controller port interface circuits, including serial access to controller data
• An 8-bit parallel I/O port, which is mostly unused in the SNES
• Circuitry for generating non-maskable interrupts on V-blank
• Circuitry for generating interrupts on calculated screen positions
• A DMA unit, supporting two primary modes:
  • General DMA, for block transfers at a rate of 2.68 MB/s
  • H-blank DMA, for transferring small data sets at the end of each scanline outside of the active display period
• Multiplication and division registers
• Two separate address busses driving the 8-bit data bus: a 24-bit "Bus A" for general access, and an 8-bit "Bus B" mainly for APU and PPU registers

Performance

The CPU as a whole employs a variable-speed system bus, with bus access times determined by the memory location accessed. The bus runs at 3.58 MHz for non-access cycles and when accessing Bus B and most internal registers, and either 2.68 or 3.58 MHz when accessing Bus A. It runs at 1.79 MHz only when accessing the controller port serial-access registers. It works at approximately 1.5 MIPS, and has a theoretical peak performance of 1.79 million 16-bit operations per second.

See also

• Super Nintendo Entertainment System technical specifications