• 1986

Hardware Description

The Z80000 is Zilog's 32-bit processor, first released in 1986. It is essentially a 32-bit expansion of its 16-bit predecessor, the Zilog Z8000. It includes multiprocessing capability, a six-stage instruction pipeline, and a 256-byte cache. Its memory addressing system can access 4 gigabytes of RAM. Described at the time as a "mainframe on a chip", the processor is in many ways an equivalent to Intel's 80386. It can execute code written for the Z8000, but is not compatible with the Intel x86 architecture, nor is it Z80 compatible.