The company was founded in 1974 by Federico Faggin and Ralph Ungermann, who were soon joined by Masatoshi Shima. All three had left Intel after working on the 4004 and 8080 microprocessors. The company's most famous product is the Z80 microprocessor, which played an important role in the evolution of early computing. Software-compatible with the Intel 8080, it offered a compelling alternative due to its lower cost and increased performance, propelling it to widespread adoption in video game systems and home computers during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The name, pronounced with a long "i" (/ˈzaɪlɒɡ/), is an acronym of Z integrated logic, also thought of as "Z for the last word of Integrated Logic".
History
Zilog was started in California in 1974 by Federico Faggin and Ralph Ungermann with support and encouragement from Exxon's computing division.[2][3] Both left Intel after working on the 4004 and 8080 microprocessors and custom chips. Masatoshi Shima, who also worked with Faggin on the 4004 and 8080, joined Zilog in 1975.[4] Ungermann did not want the company to become an Exxon subsidiary and left Zilog in 1978.[5]
On January 1, 1979, Zilog released the first issue of their comic book Captain Zilog, which featured the Z8000 computer.[6] The Z8000, introduced that year, was the company's first 16-bit microprocessor.[7]
The company became a subsidiary of Exxon in 1980. Exxon initially acquired 51 percent of the company before buying it outright;[8] however, the management and employees bought it back in 1989, led by Edgar Sack.[9]
Zilog's iconic 8-bit processor, the Z80. Pictured is one of the first Z80s ever made.
Zilog went public in 1991, but was acquired in 1998 by Texas Pacific Group for $527 million.[10] Curtis Crawford replaced Sack and changed the company's direction towards 32-bit data communications processors.
In 1999, Zilog acquired Production Languages Corporation for an unspecified amount less than $10 million.[11]
Bonds were sold against the company to fund the new developments, but after the Internet bubble burst in 2000 and the resultant reduction in customer demand for such products, Curtis Crawford was replaced by James (Jim) Thorburn, who reorganized the company under Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late 2001 and refocused it on the 8- and 16-bit microcontroller market.
Earliest logo of Zilog
Logo of Zilog introduced in the 1990s
Jim Thorburn led Zilog back into profitability, and by FY 2007, Zilog had $82 million in sales. During this time, the company developed the Z8 Encore! 8-bit Flash MCU and ZNEO 16-bit Flash MCU product families. In February 2007, Zilog hired Darin Billerbeck to replace Jim Thorburn as president and CEO.
The last year Zilog introduced any new 8-bit microcontroller products was 2007. With no new product road map, FY2008 sales fell 20% to $67.2 million. Sales fell 46% in FY2009 to $36.2 million.[citation needed]
In January 2008, Zilog declined an unsolicited proposal made by Universal Electronics Inc. to acquire the company.[12]
On February 19, 2009, Zilog announced that it had sold off its 8-bit Crimzon Universal Remote Control infrared microcontroller product line, as well as its ARM9 32-bit microcontrollers, including the Zatara security microcontrollers and 15 patents, to Maxim Integrated Products. Remote control manufacturer Universal Electronics Inc. purchased all of Zilog's software and intellectual property assets related to Zilog's universal remote control business, including all ROM code, software, and database of infrared codes.[13] Zilog sold these assets for $31 million cash.
In December 2009, IXYS Corporation bought the company for $62.4 million in cash, which was significantly below the market valuation of Zilog's stock at the time.[14][15] Details of the acquisition have been under investigation.
A May 1976 advertisement for the Zilog Z-80 8-bit microprocessor
Since early 2010, Zilog has refocused on the industrial and consumer markets for motion detection, motor control, RF wireless and embedded security applications, and is currently producing a number of reference designs that integrate its 8- and 16-bit microcontrollers with IXYS power management products.
In February 2012, Zilog announced the release of its Z8051 family of microcontrollers and tool sets to fill a vacancy in the developer market for 8051 cores that was created when chip-maker NXP Semiconductors exited the 8051 market. Later that year, Zilog announced its ZGATE Embedded Security solution, which incorporates its eZ80F91 MCU and TCP/IP stack with an embedded firewall to offer protection against cyber threats and attacks at the chip level.
In August 2017, Zilog and its parent IXYS Corporation were acquired by Littelfuse Inc in exchange for $750 million in cash and stocks.[16][17]
Microprocessors
Z80
The Z80(i) is an improved implementation of the Intel 8080 architecture, with substantial extensions to the register model and instruction set and with added hardware interface features. At introduction, the Z80 was faster, more capable, and much cheaper than the 8080. Alongside the 6502, the Z80 was one of the most popular 8-bit processors for general purpose microcomputers and other applications from the late 1970s well into the 1980s, and while modern CMOS versions of the 6502 are still in production and use today, the Z80 was discontinued in 2024.[18] The Z80 CPU was used in the SinclairZX80, ZX81, ZX Spectrum and the Amstrad CPChome computers as well as the MSX architecture and the Microbee and TandyTRS-80 (models I, II, III, 4, and others). The CP/M-80operating system (and its huge software library featuring hits like WordStar and dBase) was known to be the Z80 disk operating system, and its success is partly due to the popularity of the Z80. The 1985 Commodore 128 added a Z80 to the Commodore 64 hardware allowing it to run CP/M software; the Digital Equipment CorporationRainbow 100 similarly added a Z80 to an Intel 8088-based MS-DOS computer to enable the machine to run both MS-DOS and CP/M software natively.
Zilog also formed a Systems Division, which designed the Zilog System 8000, a Z8000- or Z80000-based multiuser computer system running a Unix derivative called ZEUS (Zilog Enhanced UNIX System).[23][24]
Zilog attempted to enter the 32-bit microcontroller market in February 2006 with the demonstration of ARM9-based Point-Of-Sale (POS) microcontroller product line.[25][26] The final product was released in 2007 called Zatara.[27] Sales were disappointing and the entire ARM9 series was sold to Maxim Integrated Products in 2009.
Zilog also produced Zdots single board computers. It includes Zilog eZ80AcclaimPlus controller, 1MB flash memory, 512KB SRAM, 10BaseT Ethernet Controller, IrDA transceiver, 2 x 60-pin system expansion interface with full MPU bus/control signals, RJ-45 Ethernet connector.[28] Motion detection version includes Z8 Encore! XP MCU.[29]
The Intel 8080 ("eighty-eighty") is the second 8-bit microprocessor designed and manufactured by Intel. It first appeared in April 1974 and is an extended and enhanced variant of the earlier 8008 design, although without binary compatibility. Although earlier microprocessors were commonly used in mass-produced devices such as calculators, cash registers, computer terminals, industrial robots, and other applications, the 8080 saw greater success in a wider set of applications, and is largely credited with starting the microcomputer industry.
A microprocessor is a computer processor for which the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit (IC), or a small number of ICs. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circuitry required to perform the functions of a computer's central processing unit (CPU). The IC is capable of interpreting and executing program instructions and performing arithmetic operations. The microprocessor is a multipurpose, clock-driven, register-based, digital integrated circuit that accepts binary data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and provides results as output. Microprocessors contain both combinational logic and sequential digital logic, and operate on numbers and symbols represented in the binary number system.
A microcontroller or microcontroller unit (MCU) is a small computer on a single integrated circuit. A microcontroller contains one or more CPUs along with memory and programmable input/output peripherals. Program memory in the form of NOR flash, OTP ROM, or ferroelectric RAM is also often included on the chip, as well as a small amount of RAM. Microcontrollers are designed for embedded applications, in contrast to the microprocessors used in personal computers or other general-purpose applications consisting of various discrete chips.
The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog that played an important role in the evolution of early computing. Launched in 1976 and software-compatible with the Intel 8080, it offered a compelling alternative due to its better integration and increased performance. As well as the 8080's seven registers and flags register, the Z80 had an alternate register set that duplicated them, two 16-bit index registers and additional instructions including bit manipulation and block copy/search.
In computer architecture, 8-bit integers or other data units are those that are 8 bits wide. Also, 8-bit central processing unit (CPU) and arithmetic logic unit (ALU) architectures are those that are based on registers or data buses of that size. Memory addresses for 8-bit CPUs are generally larger than 8-bit, usually 16-bit. 8-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 8-bit microprocessors.
The Intel 4004 is a 4-bit central processing unit (CPU) released by Intel Corporation in 1971. Sold for US$60, it was the first commercially produced microprocessor, and the first in a long line of Intel CPUs.
The Zilog Z800 was a 16-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog and meant to be released in 1985. It was instruction compatible with their existing Z80, and differed primarily in having on-chip cache and a memory management unit (MMU) to provide a 16 MB address range. It also added a huge number of new more orthogonal instructions and addressing modes.
The Zilog Z8000 is a 16-bit microprocessor architecture designed by Zilog and introduced in early 1979. Two chips were initially released, only differing in the width of the address bus: the Z8001 (23-bits) and Z8002 (16-bits).
Federico Faggin is an Italian-American physicist, engineer, inventor and entrepreneur. He is best known for designing the first commercial microprocessor, the Intel 4004. He led the 4004 (MCS-4) project and the design group during the first five years of Intel's microprocessor effort. Faggin also created, while working at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1968, the self-aligned MOS (metal–oxide–semiconductor) silicon-gate technology (SGT), which made possible MOS semiconductor memory chips, CCD image sensors, and the microprocessor. After the 4004, he led development of the Intel 8008 and 8080, using his SGT methodology for random logic chip design, which was essential to the creation of early Intel microprocessors. He was co-founder and CEO of Zilog, the first company solely dedicated to microprocessors, and led the development of the Zilog Z80 and Z8 processors. He was later the co-founder and CEO of Cygnet Technologies, and then Synaptics.
Masatoshi Shima is a Japanese electronics engineer. He was one of the architects of the world's first microprocessor, the Intel 4004. In 1968, Shima worked for Busicom in Japan, and did the logic design for a specialized CPU to be translated into three-chip custom chips. In 1969, he worked with Intel's Ted Hoff and Stanley Mazor to reduce the three-chip Busicom proposal into a one-chip architecture. In 1970, that architecture was transformed into a silicon chip, the Intel 4004, by Federico Faggin, with Shima's assistance in logic design.
4-bit computing is the use of computer architectures in which integers and other data units are 4 bits wide. 4-bit central processing unit (CPU) and arithmetic logic unit (ALU) architectures are those that are based on registers or data buses of that size. A group of four bits is also called a nibble and has 24 = 16 possible values, with a range of 0 to 15.
The Zilog Z80000 is an unreleased 32-bit processor designed by Zilog and completed in 1986. The Z80000 is a 32-bit expansion of the 16-bit Zilog Z8000 with multiprocessing capability, a six-stage instruction pipeline, and a 256-byte cache. It can address 4 gigabytes of RAM, but cannot execute code written for the Z8000 or Z80.
The Zilog eZ80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog as an updated version of the company's first product, the highly-successful Zilog Z80. The eZ80 is binary compatible with the Z80, but operating almost three times faster at the same clock frequency.
The Zilog Z8 is a microcontroller architecture, originally introduced by Zilog in 1979. Today the line also includes the Z8 Encore!, eZ8 Encore!, eZ8 Encore! XP, and eZ8 Encore! MC families.
A source-to-source translator, source-to-source compiler, transcompiler, or transpiler is a type of translator that takes the source code of a program written in a programming language as its input and produces an equivalent source code in the same or a different programming language. A source-to-source translator converts between programming languages that operate at approximately the same level of abstraction, while a traditional compiler translates from a higher level programming language to a lower level programming language. For example, a source-to-source translator may perform a translation of a program from Python to JavaScript, while a traditional compiler translates from a language like C to assembly or Java to bytecode. An automatic parallelizing compiler will frequently take in a high level language program as an input and then transform the code and annotate it with parallel code annotations or language constructs.
The KR580VM80A is a Soviet microprocessor, a clone of the Intel 8080 CPU. Different versions of this CPU were manufactured beginning in the late 1970s, the earliest known use being in the SM1800 computer in 1979. Initially called the K580IK80 (К580ИК80), it was produced in a 48-pin planar metal-ceramic package. Later, a version in a PDIP-40 package was produced and was named the KR580IK80A (КР580ИК80А). The pin layout of the latter completely matched that of Intel's 8080A CPU. In 1986 this CPU received a new part number to conform with the 1980 Soviet integrated circuit designation and became known as the KR580VM80A (КР580ВМ80А), the number it is most widely known by today. Normal clock frequency for the K580IK80A is 2 MHz, with speeds up to 2.5 MHz for the KR580VM80A. The KR580IK80A was manufactured in a 6 μm process. In the later KR580VM80A the feature size was reduced to 5 μm and the die became 20% smaller.
In computer architecture, 16-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 16 bits wide. Also, 16-bit central processing unit (CPU) and arithmetic logic unit (ALU) architectures are those that are based on registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. 16-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 16-bit microprocessors.
The NEC μCOM series is a series of microprocessors and microcontrollers manufactured by NEC in the 1970s and 1980s. The initial entries in the series were custom-designed 4 and 16-bit designs, but later models in the series were mostly based on the Intel 8080 and Zilog Z80 8-bit designs, and later, the Intel 8086 16-bit design. Most of the line was replaced in 1984 by the NEC V20, an Intel 8088 clone.
↑ The Z80 in the Genesis has access to its own dedicated 8 KB of RAM, the sound hardware, the controller ports, the video chip (VDP) (which contains the PSG sound generator), the cartridge slot, the expansion interface, and other Genesis hardware registers, so this Z80 is versatile, even to the point that it can be used for general computation. The Master System emulation mode of the Genesis uses the Z80 to run the game software while the MC68000 CPU is effectively stopped; this is how Master System games run on the Genesis through the Power Base Converter, which has barely any electronics and is almost a purely passive wiring adapter. In principle, software on a Genesis cartridge (or on Sega CD media) could use the Z80 as the main CPU and let the 68000 serve as a support CPU: the functionality of the Z80 in the Genesis is really that general and flexible. (technical information source: Sega Genesis Programming Manual)
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