I've talk with a friend who it's employed at Zilog. He has tell me about a new Z80 series with TCP/IP and DSP capabilities!! Here's the complete info: 09/20/1999 Wall Street Journal Page B7 Zilog. Inc., a Campbell, Calif., maker of chips for appliances, is expected to announce Monday it has created a new chip family to replace its 24-year-old mainstay. The eZ80 family of chips will replace the Z80, originally introduced in 1975 and built into billions of appliances since that time. Like the Z80, the eZ80 is compatible with software written for the Z80 and it processes data in 8-bit chunks. But the eZ80 runs four times as fast and is targeted to communications applications, especially Internet appliances, or simple devices that connect consumers with the Web. It includes components for Internet communication and digital-signal processing. The chips will sell for $3 to $10 and be available for others to license in November. The first Zilog-made chips will go on sale early next year. Zilog plans to follow with a 16-bit chip family in the first quarter, a spokeswoman for the company said. Zilog is a subsidiary of closely held Texas Pacific Group with 1,300 employees. Processor gains DSP muscle, IP stack to attack the real-time, online space -- Zilog updates venerable Z80 for Internet era Will Wade 09/20/1999 Electronic Engineering Times Page 22 Copyright 1999 CMP Publications Inc. CAMPBELL, CALIF. - Zilog Inc. is retooling its venerable Z80 device to focus on one of the industry's newest market drivers, the online world. The company has enhanced the architecture, which is one of the industry's oldest, with digital signal processing capabilities to facilitate real-time, online operations. The new version is the eZ80, which merges an 8-bit processor with DSP features and a TCP/IP stack. "This is an enhancement to the original architecture, but really it is something totally new," said Didier Le Lannic, senior vice president and general manager of Zilog's communications division. "We want to position this as an Internet engine." The eZ80 is aimed at the embedded marketplace, especially for applications that require online communication. It will be marketed as a soft core, available in November, and by early next year Le Lannic said, there will be several accompanying products in the family. The first peek at the design will come next week at the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose. Though the original Z80 design is more than 25 years old, it has gone through numerous revisions and enhancements and is still in use. That legacy will be an advantage to customers interested in shifting to the eZ80 family, Le Lannic said. "Current customers will still be able to use Zilog's eZ80 designs at low cost," he noted. One of the main target applications is point-of-purchase terminals, which currently require dedicated phone lines. Le Lannic said shifting those systems to the eZ80 would allow them to be connected through the Internet instead, which could lead to dramatic cost reductions to the user. "We see the Internet as a means for our customers to cut their costs by using Zilog products," he stressed. This focus on the Internet is a relatively new push for Zilog, which was acquired two years ago by the holding company Texas Pacific Group (TPG) and has since been undergoing a serious facelift. The old Zilog used neither voicemail nor e-mail at its corporate headquarters, and the Internet was seen as just another technological fad. But under the leadership of new chief executive officer, president and chairman Curtis Crawford, poached from Lucent Technologies by TPG , the Internet is emerging as a major business opportunity for the company's embedded products. "The embedded Internet is the communications medium of the next generation, connecting capabilities around the world," said Crawford. "Its potential is unlimited." "This is a totally new implementation of the original Z80 instruction set, and it's going to be a shock for people who are used to the old Z80," said Will Strauss, president of market research firm Forward Concepts (Tempe, Ariz.). September 20, 1999 �Larga y Pr�spera Vida! **** MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/) ****
