Traditional RISC processors can handle digital signal processing tasks, but the additional work sucks up valuable processing power that could be used elsewhere, said David Pelavin, product marketing manager for Hitachi's SuperH product family.

CNN: New chip design targets cell phones

Meanwhile, MPC Data is going after much more of a niche, but doing it well: its SwiftBoot tech can get Linux up and running an actual application on an embedded device-ready Renesas SuperH SH7724 processor in under a second (0.982 seconds, to be precise).

ENGADGET: Lineo's Warp 2 boots to Fedora on Atom in 4 seconds, MPC Data's SwiftBoot warms up embedded Linux in an instant