The PTM will first take a look at where the R8C Family product line fits within the large Renesas portfolio, serving 4-bit to 32-bit applications. Renesas Technology was formed in April 2003 as a joint venture between Hitachi, Ltd. and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation. At this time, Renesas inherited three main architectures; two CISC based architectures called M16C and H8, and one RISC architecture called SuperH (also known as SH). This module will focus on the left hand side, which is the M16C architecture. Starting at the bottom; the R8C with a maximum speed of 20MHz and flash memory is the only focus family for 8-bit applications, the mid range M16C mainly focuses on 16-bit applications, while the 32-bit R32C family runs up to 50MHz, and includes a single precision floating point unit. All three families are software compatible and share common peripherals. The H8C family will be supported for many years to come and its solutions will continue to evolve to meet future market requirements.