The Fascinating Story of Zilog, the Startup That Built the Z80 and Powered Home Computers - YouTube
This 32-minute video by Tech District
Origins & Founding
- The Departure: Engineers Federico Faggin and Ralph Ungermann left Intel after designing the 4004 and 8080 processors, feeling undervalued and wanting to create a company focused entirely on microprocessors.
- Early Backing: With $500,000 in funding from Exxon Enterprises, they founded Zilog in Los Altos, California.
The Z80 Breakthrough
- Technical Edge: Released as a superior, backward-compatible alternative to Intel's 8080, the Z80 required only a single +5V power supply and featured built-in DRAM refresh logic, drastically lowering hardware costs.
- Mass Adoption: The Z80 became the heart of early home computing and gaming, powering iconic machines like the TRS-80, ZX Spectrum, Pac-Man arcade cabinets, Game Boy, and graphing calculators.
Struggles & Long-Term Legacy
- Strategic Missteps: Zilog struggled with its 16-bit successor, the Z8000, which was not backward-compatible with the Z80.
- Exxon Acquisition: Increasing control by Exxon hindered Zilog's agility, ultimately contributing to missing out on the pivotal IBM PC contract to Intel.
- Enduring Impact: After corporate restructuring and an acquisition by Littelfuse in 2017, the Z80 design remained in active production for nearly 48 years before being discontinued, leaving a massive legacy in computer history.
Zilog, Inc, previously stylized as ZiLOG, is an American manufacturer of microprocessors, microcontrollers, and application-specific embedded system-on-chip (SoC) products.
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.
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