(Zilog, Inc., San Jose, CA, www.zilog.com) A semiconductor manufacturer that was founded in 1974. It was a subsidiary of Exxon from 1980 to 1989 and became a public company in 1991. Zilog's Z80 chip was the CPU in CP/M machines, which helped to create the personal computer industry. Today, Zilog makes a variety of microprocessors and microcontrollers, and the Z80 family is still a major part of it.
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| Type | Public NASDAQ: ZILG |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1974 |
| Founder(s) | Federico Faggin |
| Headquarters |  San Jose, CA, USA |
| Key people | Federico Faggin Chairman of the Board Darin G. Billerbeck President CEO Director |
| Industry | Semiconductors |
| Products | Microprocessors |
| Revenue | ▼ $ 36.16 million - 2008 |
| Operating income | ▼ $ -18.39 million - 2008 |
| Net income | ▲ $ 3.18 million - 2008 |
| Total assets | ▲ $ 51.65 million - 2008 |
| Total equity | ▲ $ 31.63 million - 2008 |
| Employees | 174 - September 2009 |
| Website | ZiLOG.com |
Zilog, Inc., NASDAQ: ZILG often seen as ZiLOG (the official company denotation in 1998 through Jun 2007, which stands for "Z (the last word of) integrated logic"[1]), is a manufacturer of 8-bit, 16-bit, 24-bit, and 32-bit microprocessors, and is most famous for its Intel 8080-compatible Z80 series.
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Zilog was incorporated in California in 1974 by Federico Faggin, who left Intel after working on the 8080. The company became a subsidiary of Exxon in 1980, but the management and employees bought it back in 1989. Zilog went public in 1991, but was acquired in 1998 by Texas Pacific Group, who, after sales plummeted, reorganized the company in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late 2001.
On January 2008, Zilog declined an unsolicited proposal made by Universal Electronics Inc to acquire the company.[2]
In December 2009, IXYS Corporation offered to buy the company for $62.4m in cash, which was significantly below the market valuation of Zilog's stock at the time.[3] [4] Details of the acquisition have been under investigation.
The Z80 was an improved implementation of the Intel 8080 architecture, which was faster, more capable, and much cheaper; alongside the 6502 it was one of the most popular 8-bit processors for general purpose microcomputers and other applications. It was used in the Nintendo Game Boy, the Sinclair ZX80, ZX81 and ZX Spectrum home microcomputers as well as the MSX architecture and the Tandy TRS-80 series—among many others. More so than simply sparking improvements in the budding field of home computing and gaming, the Z-80 also sparked a revolution in electronic music, as the first truly programmable polyphonic synthesizers (as well as their peripherals) relied heavily on implementations of this CPU.
Many Texas Instruments graphing calculators used the Z80 as the main processor, and the chip found continued use in some game consoles such as the Sega Mega Drive (Genesis in the United States) as a dedicated sound controller. The CP/M operating system (and its huge software library featuring hits like Wordstar and dBase) was known to be "the Z80 disk operating system", and its success is partly due to the popularity of the Z80.
After the Z80 Zilog introduced the 16-bit Z8000 and 32-bit Z80000 processors, but these were not particularly successful, and the company refocused on the microcontroller market, producing both basic CPUs and application-specific integrated circuits/standard products (ASICs/ASSPs) built around a CPU core. As well as producing processors, Zilog has produced several other components. One of the most famous was the Z8530 serial communications controller as found on Sun SPARCstations and SPARCservers up to the SPARCstation 20.
Zilog also formed a Systems Division, which designed the Zilog System 8000, a Z8000- or Z80000-based multiuser computer system running a Unix derivative called ZEUS (Zilog Enhanced UNIX System).[5]
Zilog entered 32-bit microcontroller market in February 2006 with the demonstration of ARM9-based Point-Of-Sale (POS) microcontroller product line.[6] [7] The final product was released in 2007 called Zatara.[8]
Zilog also produced Zdots single board computers. It includes Zilog eZ80AcclaimPlus controller, 1MiB flash memory, 512KiB SRAM, 10BaseT Ethernet Controller, IrDA transceiver, 2 x 60-pin system expansion interface with full MPU bus/control signals, RJ-45 Ethernet connector.[9] Motion detection version includes Z8 Encore! XP MCU.[10]
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