Ah yes, the ever-famed Sega Dreamcast. In my opinion, this was a system ahead of its time in many areas. Unfortunately, it succumbed to Sony’s Playstation console and fell off the map completely in the console world. Well, guess what Dreamcast fans: It is back! While it is not going to make an appearance in its old console case, it is down to the size of a mere chip. Take a look for yourself!

Officials from Japan’s Renesas, which assumed control over the development of the SH processor from ST Microelectronics on Sept. 28, announced the SH3707 embedded processor at the Fall Processor Forum here today. The SH3707 combines both an advanced SuperH core and a PowerVR graphics core, the components found in the original Dreamcast.

Specifically, the Dreamcast console contained a 200-MHz Hitachi SH4 with the capability to perform 360 million instructions per second (MIPS) and 1.4 million megaflops, or floating-point operations per second. The Dreamcast also contained an NEC PowerVR2 graphics chip.

The new SH3707 uses a faster 540 MIPS/2.1 gigaflops engine, with a 64-bit interface to memory. The core also contains a PowerVR MBX chip, a core that Imagination Technologies has licensed to Intel and Texas Instruments, among others.