Brussels, 04/07/2001 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday, the European Commission authorised the creation of a joint venture called SuperH between Japan's Hitachi Ltd and the Dutch firm STMicroelectronics NV, which will consolidate the two companies' cooperation in the development of microprocessor cores. SuperH will develop and licence to third parties the SH4 and RISC microprocessor cores for embedded systems applications. SH architecture is a RISC microprocessor technology based on an original Hitachi architecture. Since 1998, the parties have been jointly promoting the SH4 generation of this architecture and have developed the SH5 core. Through the proposed transaction, the development and licensing of SH4 and subsequent upgrades will be transferred to SuperH, which will be the sole legal entity entitled to grant licences for SH4 microprocessor architecture, including the necessary intellectual property rights. The review carried out by the Commission showed that SuperH would not create or strengthen a dominant position on the market where it will be active since the joint venture will face several significant competitors. The investigation also showed that now competition concerns would arise in neighbouring markets.