* Like the NES, the Super NES has a CPU for main data processing, and a Picture Processing Unit for the graphics. Also like the NES, the Super NES CPU and PPU have a master clock speed of 21.5 MHz, but the CPU divides it down to between 1.78, 2.68 and 3.58 MHz due to slow (cheap) cartridge ROM, and it was cheaper to make the system with said clock speed. This led to the belief that the SNES was a slow system, and that too much on screen action would slow it down.
- The processor itself was a 65C816, a 16-bit successor to the 6502 used in the NES, Apple II, Commodore 64, and Atari consoles and computers. Nintendo actually used Apple IIgs computers as development systems, since they also used the 65C816.
- The bus speed was a problem at first, but the system has a lot of memory, and like the NES before, it has a cart-accessible expansion bus, which meant carts could add their own extra processors to run at higher speeds.
- One of the most famous of these chips is the "Super FX" chip, which was basically a GPU for running Polygonal Graphics. It even had some extra memory.
- Another famous chip called SA-1, used in Kirby Super Star and Super Mario RPG, was a second faster 65C816 clocked at 10.5 MHz that was also used for Polygonal Graphics (as well as for Copy Protection).
- The system also has its own sound processor, made by Sony (naturally, this was before Sony made its own system). This wasn't made just to generate sound, but to also mix it, like a MOD with it's own custom instruments/samples , with 8 ADPCM sample-playback channels available. Even though this hardware was advanced, it was bottlenecked by the low amount of space provided by the cartridges and the limited RAM. The filtering hardware managed to remove aliasing in heavily compressed audio samples. However, it also muffled certain types of audio samples. It also did reverb and other sound effects.