Super Harvard Architecture Single-Chip Computer

The Super Harvard Architecture Single-Chip Computer (SHARC) is a high performance floating-point and fixed-point DSP from Analog Devices.

The SHARC is a Harvard architecture word-addressed VLIW processor; it knows nothing of 8-bit or 16-bit values since each address is used to point to a whole 32-bit word, not just an octet.

It is thus neither little-endian nor big-endian, though a compiler may use either convention if it implements 64-bit data and/or some way to pack multiple 8-bit or 16-bit values into a single 32-bit word.

Code and data are normally fetched from on-chip memory, which the user must split into regions of different word sizes as desired.

Most memory-related CPU instructions can not access all the bits of 48-bit memory, but a special 48-bit register is provided for this purpose.

Operating systems may use overlays to work around this problem, transferring 48-bit data to on-chip memory as needed for execution.