This page’s documentation is not complete and is based off of preliminary testing. There may be errors in the documentation or the naming conventions may not be completely agreed upon.

The processor used by the Casio Prizm, a custom SuperH 4-A with no FPU, utilizes four clocks to regulate commands. These clocks are known as the CPU clock, the data bus clock, the SH clock and the peripheral clock.

CPU clock #

The CPU clock is the main clock used by the processor. It directly controls the speed of the processor. The CPU clock itself is controlled by a clock pulse generator (CPG). The CPG consists of a input clock signal from a Crystal oscillator which is divided to achieve the standard 58 MHz clock frequency of the Prizm. The circuit also contains two internal phase locked loops (PLL circuits) which output data about the state of the CPG.

Peripheral clock #

The peripheral clock operates similarly to the CPU clock and is derived from the same CPG signal. It’s used to operate peripheral modules and also controls several registers with the CPG control unit, such as the FRQCR (Frequency Control Register)

Bus clock #

This clock controls the speed of memory reads and other hardware related functions. Its frequency is determined upon boot by the load on the CKIO pin and can take the the value of either 1x or 4x the frequency of the crystal oscillator. This value cannot be changed after startup. The bus clock is also used as the signal source for the Peripheral and CPU clocks. If the set division ratio correlates to a speed over 200Mhz, memory operations may go haywire.

SH clock #

This clock, the SuperHyway clock, affects the speed of the SuperHyway bus that connects most operations within the processor, such as instruction fetching/sending, and IL data access.

Important Quirks #

Not all values specified by Renesas are invalid on the prizm. The prizm, in fact, is already using invalid values.

• The divisors must be in the correct ratio in order to function properly.
• The CPU has a calculated max frequency of 500MHz. Going above that or close to 470MHz causes the hardware to lock up.
• The values listed in the above table do not conform to the frequencies used by the CPU when calculated by Renesas’ methods.

Changing Clocks #

To change the clock frequencies, use the Clock_Pulse_Generator.