Z80

Zilog Z80

An early Z80 microprocessor, manufactured in June 1976 according to the date stamp.
Produced	From March 1976 to present
Common manufacturer(s)	Mostek, Synertek, Zilog, SGS-Thomson, NEC, Sharp, Toshiba, Rohm, GoldStar, Hitachi, National Semiconductor, and others.
Max. CPU clock rate	2.5 MHz to 8 MHz with CMOS variant up to 20 MHz

The Z80 CPU is an 8-bit based microprocessor. It was introduced by Zilog in 1976 as the startup company's first product. The Z80 was conceived by Federico Faggin in late 1974 and developed by him and his then-11 employees at Zilog from early 1975 until March 1976, when the first fully working samples were delivered. With the revenue from the Z80, the company built its own chip factories and grew to over a thousand employees over the following two years.

The Zilog Z80 was a software compatible extension and enhancement of the Intel 8080 and, like it, was mainly aimed at embedded systems. According to the designers, the primary targets for the Z80 CPU (and its optional support and peripheral ICs) were products like intelligent terminals, high end printers and advanced cash registers as well as [telecom equipment]], industrial robots and other kinds of automation equipment.

The Z80 was officially introduced on the market in July 1976 and came to be widely used also in general desktop computers using CP/M and other operating systems as well as in the home computers of the 1980s. It was also common in military applications, musical equipment, such as synthesizers, and in the computerized coin operated video games of the late 1970s and early 1980, the arcade machines or video game arcade cabinets.