Zilog
Zilog, Nasdaq: ZILG often seen as ZiLOG (the official company denotation since 1998), is a manufacturer of 8-bit, 16-bit, 24-bit, and 32-bit CPUs, and is most famous for its Intel 8080-compatible Z80 series. Zilog was incorporated in California in 1974 by Federico Faggin, who left Intel after working on the 8080. The Z80 was an improved 8080 which was faster, more capable, and much cheaper; alongside the 6502 it was one of the most popular 8-bit processors for general purpose microcomputers and other applications. It was used in the Nintendo Game Boy, the Sinclair ZX80, ZX81 and ZX Spectrum home microcomputers as well as the MSX architecture and the Tandy TRS-80 series - among many others. Also, many Texas Instruments graphing calculators used the Z80 as the main processor and in some newer game consoles as a secondary processor, like the Mega Drive. The CP/M operating 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.
After the Z80 Zilog introduced 16-bit and 32-bit processors, but these were not particularly successful, and the company refocused on the microcontroller market, producing both basic CPUs and application-specific integrated circuits/standard products (ASICs/ASSPs) built around a CPU core. As well as producing processors, Zilog has produced several other components. One of the most famous was the Z8530 serial communications controller as found on Sun SPARCstations and SPARCservers up to the SPARCstation 20.
The company became a subsidiary of Exxon in 1980, but the management and employees bought it back in 1989. It went public in 1991, but was acquired in 1998 by Texas Pacific Group, who, after chip prices plummeted, reorganized the company in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late 2001.
List of Zilog products
Microprocessor families
- Zilog Z80 (1976)
- Zilog Z8000 (ca 1978)
- Zilog Z8 (1979)
- Zilog Z800 (1985)
- Zilog Z80000 (late 1985)
- Zilog Z280 (early 1986)
- Zilog Z180 (late 1986)
- Zilog Z380 (1994)
- Zilog eZ80 (2001)
- Zilog eZ8 (2005)
- Zilog Z16 (2006)
Microcontroller families
Infrared controllers
IrDA transceiver
- ZHX series
Communication Controllers
Microprocessor
- Z80382/Z8L382
Single chip modem
- Z022 series
PCMCIA adapter
- Z16017/Z16M17/Z86017
Serial Communication Controllers
Wireless controller
- Z87200
- Z87L01
- Z87L10
- Z86295
- Z89 series
TV controllers
Line 21 Decoders
- Z86129/Z86130/Z86131
- Z86228/Z86229/Z86230
TV Controllers
- Z90231
- Z90233
- Z90251
- Z90255