Zilog Z80 8-Bit CPU Turns 50, Open-source Replacement Heads To Drop-in DIP40 Silicon (tomshardware.com)
- Reference: 0184513406
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/07/20/0046231/zilog-z80-8-bit-cpu-turns-50-open-source-replacement-heads-to-drop-in-dip40-silicon
- Source link: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/zilog-z80-turns-50-as-open-source-replacement-heads-for-drop-in-dip40-silicon
> The Zilog Z80 has just turned 50 years old. This iconic 8-bit processor first went on sale in July 1976 and stayed in production for 48 years until Zilog, now a Littelfuse subsidiary, stopped accepting orders [2]in June 2024 . However, there's an open-source replacement closer than ever to shipping in the chip's original 40-pin DIP package thanks to community-funded fabrication...
>
> The chip powered the ZX Spectrum, TRS-80, MSX machines, Nintendo's Game Boy, Sega's Master System, the Pac-Man arcade cabinet, and Texas Instruments' graphing calculators, then shipped in industrial controllers for decades after home computing moved on to more powerful successors. Zilog's end-of-life notice, dated April 15, 2024, told customers its wafer foundry was discontinuing support for the Z84C00 family, and last-time-buy orders closed that June.
>
> However, Renaldas Zioma's FOSS Z80 project, [3]launched shortly after the end-of-life notice , now has working silicon. The first version, fabbed on SkyWater's 130nm node through Tiny Tapeout 7 on a die of just 0.064mm(2), has been confirmed as functional via the project's GitHub repository. A QFN64 version with all 40 pins exposed followed on the Efabless CI2406 shuttle, two further runs then went through IHP's 130nm process, and the current run targets the classic DIP40 form factor using chip-on-board assembly on GlobalFoundries' 180nm GF180MCU node via Wafer.Space. The end goal here is to fab a drop-in replacement for machines like the ZX Spectrum and RC2014 kits...
>
> Zilog is trimming the Z80's official successor line as well. A product change notification from last October put the eZ80L92, along with several Z8F-series microcontrollers, on end-of-life, citing "little to no demand..." [T]he pipelined eZ80 architecture, introduced in 2001 and still inside TI's current TI-84 Plus CE calculators, otherwise remains in Zilog's catalog.
[4]In 1999 Slashdot was calling Zilog's updated eZ80 "one of the fastest 8-bit CPUs available today, executing code 4 times faster than a standard Z80 operating at the same clock speed."
Slashdot headline from 2001: [5]Zilog To File For Chapter 11 .
[1] https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/zilog-z80-turns-50-as-open-source-replacement-heads-for-drop-in-dip40-silicon
[2] https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/04/20/1916203/the-legendary-zilog-z80-cpu-is-being-discontinued-after-nearly-50-years
[3] https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/dev-hopes-to-save-legendary-z80-chip-with-open-source-clone-resurrects-iconic-zilog-chip-with-drop-in-z80-replacement
[4] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/99/09/20/1626218/zilog-re-introduces-the-z80
[5] https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/01/12/07/1538223/zilog-to-file-for-chapter-11
Had to relearn all the Zilog assembly nmemonics (Score:2)
After coming from the Intel 8085 in the late 70's.
Don't you just love copyrighted nmemonics?
I had a CP/M system which had a Z-80 before I got my first IBM PC clone. It had a 5 megabyte hard drive which I wrote a CP/M BIOS extension for.
Also used (Sega?) arcade boards I got at the local surplus store which had Z-80's on them for various embedded projects.
6502 on the Vic-20 - 4k - tape only (Score:2)
That's the ticket to truly getting a hang of create more efficient assembler code. Compiled by hand with paper and pencil of course.
Re: (Score:2)
More than 128 bytes of RAM is wasteful, really. #Team2600
Re: (Score:2)
> More than 128 bytes of RAM is wasteful, really. #Team2600
Yeesh ... The Atari 2600. Was that small!
Meh (Score:3)
This is all somewhat misleading because Zilog still makes 8 bit "eZ80" microcontrollers with Z80 compatibility mode. Though for new designs you should usually use their new 24-bit addressing mode for high speed general I/O and debugging. High pin count versions in stock at Mouser with no EOL warnings listed.
If you really want to experience the differences between that and a modern instruction set the simulation software should "all" cover it. Probably better off learning RISC5 if you want to get good at low-feature ASM in a more useful context.
Size matters (Score:2)
"So, we tried the biggest node we could find but the die came out too small, we had to find a bigger process node to make it big enough we could handle it to fit it in the package and attach it."
Any money programming for Z-80 based systems? (Score:2)
Any money programming for Z-80 based systems?
Re: (Score:2)
Unlikely many companies would be using the Z-80 in any new or current products.
An elegant chip (Score:3, Interesting)
I learned assembly on the Z80, it is super accessible and fun to use. So glad future generations will get to experience the push and pop of a memory stack firsthand.
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
Obsolete. I learned ASM on Itanium and I will proudly pass the tradition down to my prodigy, if I ever find a wife.
Re: (Score:2)
You could always teach them Latin.
Re: (Score:2)
Progeny.
Re: (Score:2)
No I think the word he originally chose was the right one!
Re: (Score:3)
> I learned assembly on the Z80, it is super accessible and fun to use. So glad future generations will get to experience the push and pop of a memory stack firsthand.
Zilog still makes Z80 based things. They only ended production of the DIP40 package for the Z80. They have various SoCs and microcontrollers using the Z80 processor core. It's a little less convenient if you want to build a Z80 based computer.
The other alternative is the 6502 which is still available in DIP package as WDC (western design corpora
Re: (Score:3)
The memory addressing made sense, I liked the register layout, I would highly recommend learning the Z80 or the 68000 if you have never done machine language before. On the old machines, graphics were done by writing to memory addresses, I'm not sure if that is possible to do that anymore in Windows. Machine language was great at that.