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- Katsushige Mita became Hitachi's fourth president in 1981, leading the company's modernization through automation, cost cutting, and innovation.
- By 1990, Hitachi accounted for over 6% of Japan's R&D spending and held more patents than any other Japanese company, producing diverse products from bullet trains to microcomputer drawing tablets.
- Hitachi acquired National Advanced Systems in 1989, forming Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), and later partnered with IBM and HP for laptops and PA-RISC CPUs.
- The H8 microcontroller family (introduced 1988) was Hitachi's preferred controller, used in industrial controls, robotics, and consumer devices like LEGO Mindstorms and Nokia 2110.
- In 1990, a legal battle with Motorola ended with mutual violations, making Hitachi's H8 and Motorola's 68030 effectively illegal to sell.
- Hitachi released PA-RISC workstations (3050 series) in 1991, offering both Motorola 68040 and HP PA-RISC CPUs, showcasing the CISC/RISC war.
- The SuperH (SH-1) microcontroller launched in 1992 as a low-power 32-bit RISC design, targeting embedded markets like PDAs and mobile phones.
- Sega adopted the SH-2 CPU for the Saturn console (1994), using dual processors to boost performance, leading to over 15 million SH-2 units shipped by 1997.
- SuperH became the global RISC market leader with 35% share by 1996, used in automotive ECUs, handheld PCs, and the Sega Dreamcast (SH-4).
- Hitachi transitioned to storage solutions in the 2000s, buying IBM's HDD business to form HGST, and later merged semiconductor operations with Mitsubishi to form Renesas in 2003.
- By 2021, Hitachi shifted focus back to energy, heavy industry, and electric motors, exiting most computing businesses except mainframes (sold IBM z systems until 2017).