Zilog Z80Yes…this is something your pops probably played with when he was your age.

David Oguns

Birth and History of Z80

•Designed and manufactured from 1976 onwards.

•One of the most popular CPUs of all time.

•Designed to replace Intel’s 8080 processor and remained compatible with it.

•Had more instructions, faster speeds, and required less support chips than Intel’s rival.

•Arguably one of the most successful CPUs ever.

PurposeWhy would anyone use such a piece of crap? 8-bits couldn’t even store big mama’s weight.

•First of all, big mama isn’t THAT big.

•Improvements over Intel’s 8080

•Eventually became widespread because of lower cost and efficiency.

•A built-in memory controller for DRAM that would otherwise have to be provided by external circuitry.

•Lower price (still why Intel seems to lose)

•Has some nifty features that parallel modern day SIMD, SSE, and 3D Now! technologies.

Technical SpecsMax. Clock Speed: Z80 - 2.5MHz, Z80A - 4MHz . NEW models up to 25MHz!! Power Requirements: Z80 - 5V@60mA, Z80A - 5V@90mA Operating Temp: 0 - 70 deg C. Min. Instruction time: 1uS (@4MHz) Max. Instruction time: 5.75uS (@4MHz) No. of Instructions: 158 (78 instructions of 8088 are a subset) Internal Registers: 14 Stack: RAM

*I do not claim to know all or any of the above information.

Cool Stuff You Might Actually Care About:

•Nintendo used Z80 processors for their Game Boy and Game Boy Color handheld systems.

•Sega used Z80 processors for their MegaDrive/Master System, and for their handheld Game Gear system.

•Countless arcade hardware utilize Z80 CPUs.

•The Z80 has also become a popular embedded microprocessor and microcontroller core, where it remains in widespread use today.1

Works Cited

Z80 Specs from: Zophar’s Domain

http://www.zophar.net/tech/files/z80brief.html

General Information:

1. Information Headquarters http://www.informationheadquarters.com/History_of_computing/Zilog_Z80.shtml

2. Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zilog_Z80

3.Microprocessor History

http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~mptaylor/microprocessor.html