Zilog Z380

The Z380 is a Zilog 16-bit/32-bit processor from 1994. It is Z80 compatible, but it was released much later than its competitors (the Intel 386 and Motorola 68020) and as a result was never able to gain any significant market leverage. On the other hand, the newer and faster eZ80 family has been more successful recently (as of 2005). The chip is still avaiable from Zilog in several forms[1].

Zilog Z382

The chip supports 32-bit processing with a clock speed of up to 20 MHz.[2]

The Z380 is incompatible with Zilog's older Z800 and Z280. As the Z380 is derived from the newer Z180 it is a less mini computer like design than these older processors, with fewer features. Instead it has a wider ALU and register length of 32-bits. It can therefore address 4 GB directly:

  • Similar pipelined execution or fetch/execute overlap as the Z280[3]
  • Simpler MMU, without memory protection.
  • Minimum of 2 clocks/instruction. This is like the Z280, but also for 32 bit operations.
  • No on-chip cache, as it is redundant with the faster static RAMs of the 1990s and onwards.
  • Lacks the I/O trap feature

References
Notes
  1. "Zilog". www.zilog.com.
  2. Eeiss, Ray (April 28, 1994). "Zilog extends Z80 to 16 bits, 32-bit addressing". EDN.
  3. "Z380 Microprocessor Product Specification" (pdf). San Jose, California: Zilog. July 2008. Retrieved April 2, 2016. page 45
Bibliography

Further reading


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