block copy, block input/output (I/O), and byte search instructions. rotate instructions for BCD number strings in memory. improved and more accurate (than the previous 8080) BCD arithmetic. shifts/rotates on memory and registers other than the accumulator. single-bit addressing of all registers and memory, including bit testing. more flexible addressing modes for input/output to external peripheral ports. more flexible 16-bit data movement (load, or LD) instructions, crucially including the stack pointer SP. A more logical, comprehensible and readable system of assembler instruction mnemonics. The Z80 offered many improvements over the 8080: According to Faggin, he worked 80 hours a week in order to meet the tight schedule given by the financial investors. CEO Federico Faggin was actually heavily involved in the chip layout work, together with two dedicated layout people. Masatoshi Shima designed most of the microarchitecture as well as the gate and transistor levels of the Z80 CPU, assisted by a small number of engineers and layout people. įaggin designed the instruction set to be binary compatible with the Intel 8080 so that most 8080 code, notably the CP/M operating system and Intel's PL/M compiler for 8080 (as well as its generated code), would run unmodified on the new Z80 CPU. These companies were chosen because they could do the ion implantation needed to create the depletion-mode MOSFETs that the Z80 design used as load transistors in order to cope with a single 5 Volt power supply. Some of the Z80 support and peripheral ICs were under development at this point, and many of them were launched during the following year.Įarly Z80s were manufactured by Synertek and Mostek, before Zilog had its own manufacturing factory ready, in late 1976. Masatoshi Shima, the principal logic and transistor level-designer of the 4004 and the 8080 under Faggin's supervision, joined the Zilog team.Īccording to the designers, the primary targets for the Z80 CPU (and its optional support and peripheral ICs ) were products like intelligent terminals, high end printers and advanced cash registers as well as telecom equipment, industrial robots and other kinds of automation equipment.īy March 1976, Zilog had developed the Z80 as well as an accompanying assembler based development system for its customers, and by July 1976, this was formally launched onto the market. He also developed the basic design methodology used for memories and microprocessors at Intel and led the work on the Intel 4004, the 8080 and several other ICs. At Fairchild Semiconductor, and later at Intel, Faggin had been working on fundamental transistor and semiconductor manufacturing technology. The Z80 came about when physicist and engineer Federico Faggin left Intel at the end of 1974 to found Zilog with Ralph Ungermann. In recent decades Zilog has refocused on the ever-growing market for embedded systems and the most recent Z80-compatible microcontroller family, the fully pipelined 24-bit eZ80 with a linear 16 MB address range, has been successfully introduced alongside the simpler Z80 and Z180 products. This won the Z80 acceptance in the world market since large companies like NEC, Toshiba, Sharp, and Hitachi started to manufacture the device (or their own Z80-compatible clones or designs). 
The design was also copied by several Japanese, East European and Soviet manufacturers. Zilog licensed the Z80 to the US-based Synertek and Mostek, which had helped them with initial production, as well as to a European second source manufacturer, SGS. It was also common in military applications, musical equipment such as synthesizers (like the Roland Jupiter-8), and coin operated arcade games of the late 1970s and early 1980s, including Pac-Man. Although used in that role, the Z80 also became one of the most widely used CPUs in desktop computers and home computers from the 1970s to the mid-1980s. The Zilog Z80 is a software-compatible extension and enhancement of the Intel 8080 and, like it, was mainly aimed at embedded systems.
With the revenue from the Z80, the company built its own chip factories and grew to over a thousand employees over the following two years. The first working samples were delivered in March 1976, and it was officially introduced on the market in July 1976. The Z80 was conceived by Federico Faggin in late 1974 and developed by him and his 11 employees starting in early 1975. The Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor introduced by Zilog as the startup company's first product. The Z80's original DIP40 chip package pinout
0 kommentar(er)
