Zilog
More info
- Creator
- Federico Faggin, Ralph Ungermann
- Released
- 1974
- Type
- Semiconductor manufacturer
The Intel defectors' company, which built a processor so successful that the rest of its history is about failing to do it again.
Federico Faggin, who had led work on the Intel 4004 and 8080, left Intel in 1974 with Ralph Ungermann and started Zilog with money from Exxon. The Z80 shipped in 1976: compatible with the 8080, but cheaper to design in and with a richer instruction set. It powered CP/M machines, the ZX Spectrum, MSX and countless embedded controllers.
The 16-bit follow-up, the Z8000 (1979), lost out to the 8086 and 68000, and Zilog settled into microcontrollers and peripheral chips instead – the Z8530 serial controller sat in early Macintoshes. The company passed to IXYS in 2010, and with it to Littelfuse. In April 2024 Zilog announced the end of the standalone Z80, after forty-eight years in production.