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Epson Research and Development
Vancouver Design Center
S1D13704
Interfacing to the NEC VR4102™ Microprocessor
X26A-G-008-05
Issue Date: 01/02/12
2 Interfacing to the NEC VR4102
2.1 The NEC VR4102 System Bus
The VR-Series family of microprocessors features a high-speed synchronous system bus
typical of modern microprocessors. Designed with external LCD controller support and
Windows CE-based embedded consumer applications in mind, the VR4102 offers a highly
integrated solution for portable systems. This section is an overview of the operation of the
CPU bus to establish interface requirements.
2.1.1 Overview
The NEC VR4102 is designed around the RISC architecture developed by MIPS. This
microprocessor is designed around the 66MHz VR4100 CPU core which supports 64-bit
processing. The CPU communicates with the Bus Control Unit (BCU) with its internal
SysAD bus. The BCU in turn communicates with external devices with its ADD and DAT
buses that can be dynamically sized to 16 or 32-bit operation.
The NEC VR4102 has direct support for an external LCD controller. Specific control
signals are assigned for an external LCD controller that provide an easy interface to the
CPU. A 16M byte block of memory is assigned for the LCD controller with its own chip
select and ready signals available. Word or byte accesses are controlled by the system high
byte signal, SHB#.
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