6502
A MOS 6502 processor in a DIP-40 plastic package. The four-digit date code indicates it was made in the 45th week of 1985
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| Produced | 1975 |
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| Max. CPU clock rate | 1 MHz to 2 MHz |
| Instruction set | MOS 6502 |
| Transistors | 3,510 |
| Instructions | 56 |
| Data width | 8 |
| Address width | 16 |
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The MOS Technology 6502 (typically "sixty-five-oh-two" or "six-five-oh-two") is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by a small team led by Chuck Peddle for MOS Technology. When it was introduced in 1975, the 6502 was, by a considerable margin, the least expensive full-featured microprocessor on the market. It initially sold for less than one-sixth the cost of competing designs from larger companies, such as Motorola and Intel, and caused rapid decreases in pricing across the entire processor market. Along with the Zilog Z80, it sparked a series of projects that resulted in the home computer revolution of the early 1980s.
Popular home video game consoles and computers, such as Atari, Apple II, Nintendo Entertainment System, Commodore PET and others, used the 6502 or variations of the basic design. Soon after the 6502's introduction, MOS Technology was purchased outright by Commodore International, who continued to sell the microprocessor and licenses to other manufacturers. In the early days of the 6502, it was second-sourced by Rockwell and Synertek, and later licensed to other companies. In its CMOS form, which was developed by the Western Design Center, the 6502 family continues to be widely used in embedded applications, with estimated production volumes in the hundreds of millions.
The 6502 was designed by many of the same engineers that had designed the Motorola 6800 microprocessor family. Motorola started the 6800 microprocessor project in 1971 with Tom Bennett as the main architect. The chip layout began in late 1972, the first 6800 chips were fabricated in February 1974 and the full family was officially released in November 1974. John Buchanan was the designer of the 6800 chip and Rod Orgill, who later did the 6501, assisted Buchanan with circuit analyses and chip layout.Bill Mensch joined Motorola in June 1971 after graduating from the University of Arizona (at age 26). His first assignment was helping define the peripheral ICs for the 6800 family and later he was the principal designer of the 6820 Peripheral Interface Adapter (PIA). Motorola's engineers could run analog and digital simulations on an IBM 370-165 mainframe computer. Bennett hired Chuck Peddle in 1973 to do architectural support work on the 6800 family products already in progress. He contributed in many areas, including the design of the 6850 ACIA (serial interface).
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