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From: gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Mythical microprocessors
Message-ID: <79700005@p.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 5 Aug 88 17:35:00 GMT
References: <677@buengc.BU.EDU>
Lines: 16
Nf-ID: #R:buengc.BU.EDU:677:p.cs.uiuc.edu:79700005:000:783
Nf-From: p.cs.uiuc.edu!gillies    Aug  5 12:35:00 1988


First, EXXON bought Zilog in the early 1980's (1982?), and proceeded
to kill it.  Remember Exxon office systems, built from Z80 CPUs?
Zilog's glory days ended shortly thereafter.  Xerox does this all the
time (kills thriving companies after purchasing them) (e.g.  Shugart &
Diablo).

I heard that the (oriental) designer of the Z80 and Z8000 did most of
the design in his head.  That is, he understood almost the entire CPU
and its layout in VLSI.  I think he left from Zilog before the Z80,000
was complete.  Had he stayed (to influence the Z80,000 design), the
chip might have been more successful.

Don Gillies, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Illinois
1304 W. Springfield, Urbana, Ill 61801      
ARPA: gillies@cs.uiuc.edu   UUCP: {uunet,ihnp4,harvard}!uiucdcs!gillies