![]() The Z80 was a contemporary of MOS Technology’s 6502, and like that chip, it stood out not only for its elegant design but also for being dirt cheap (about US $25). ![]() In March of that year, they finally had a prototype chip. The team toiled through 1975 and into 1976. “By the end I had to get glasses,” he says. Faggin soon learned that when it comes to microchips, small is beautiful but it can hurt your eyes. For months, Faggin, Ungermann, and Masatoshi Shima, another ex-Intel engineer, worked 80-hour weeks hunched over tables, drawing the Z80’s circuits. The goal was to outperform the 8080 while offering full compatibility with 8080 software, to lure customers away from Intel. Zilog had to aim higher on the food chain, and the Z80 microprocessor project was born. Even if theirs was better than the others, they’d see only slim profits. So when Faggin founded Zilog with former Intel colleague Ralph Ungermann, they decided to start with something simpler: a single-chip microcontroller.īut the engineers soon realized that the microcontroller market was crowded with very good chips. While at Intel, he had contributed to the designs of two seminal specimens: the primordial 4004, and the 8080, of Altair computer fame. Federico Faggin knew well the kind of money and man-hours it took to market a microprocessor.
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