LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Motorola 68000: Processors
built 667 days ago
Motorola 68000 series CPUs have been the standard processors for Unix workstation during early and mid 1980's. They were ... widely used in last generation home computers, before PCs broke into that market. Especially the well known Atari ST and Commodore Amiga systems used the 68000 CPU and follow-up models got up to the 68040 (standard configuration, not talking about CPU expansions).
Source:
The 68000 grew out of the MACSS (Motorola Advanced Computer System on Silicon) project, begun in 1976 to develop an entirely new architecture without backward compatibility. It would be a higher-power sibling complementing the existing 8-bit 6800 line rather than a compatible successor. In the end, the 68000 did retain a bus protocol compatibility mode for existing 6800 peripheral devices, and a version with an 8-bit data bus was produced. However, the designers mainly focused on the future, or forward compatibility, which gave the M68K platform a head start against later 32-bit instruction set architectures. For instance, the CPU registers are 32 bits wide, though few self-contained structures in the processor itself operate on 32 bits at a time. The 68000 may be considered a 16-bit microprocessor which is microcoded to accelerate 32-bit tasks.
Source:
The Motorola MC68000 was introduced in 1979 as the successor to the 8-bit 6800 family. It featured a large address space, 32-bit registers, a large number of addressing modes, and an enlarged instruction set with more than a thousand opcodes. It was designed with the intention of running multitasking operating systems in general and specifically Unix. Its use in Unix machines has now long since passed, having been usurped by more advanced RISC processors. The 68000 processor was ... used in the original Macintosh computers, as well as the Atari ST, the Commodore Amiga, and Jef Raskin's CAT computer,[1] all long extinct. Because of the processor's wide range of software and reasonable computing power, it is now used extensively in embedded systems.
Source:
TI graphing calculators generally fall into two distinct groups, those powered by the Zilog Z80 and those running on the Motorola 68000 series. Although a derivative of the Z80 was in the original Game Boy, the 68000 is far more powerful, and therefore better suited for gaming and processor intensive applications. The 68K calculators, which include the TI-89/Titanium, TI-92/Plus, and Voyage 200, are generally thought of more highly among TI community members than the Z80s. However, the newest of the Z80 series, the TI-83 Plus and TI-84 Plus Silver Edition, are becoming very popular with students new to the product line.
Source:
This important revision introduces both students and practicing computer professionals to the characteristics of the Motorola 68000 family of processors. It has been widely applauded in previous editions as a text that is practical, easy to read, and designed to educate readers on the concepts as well as applied theory. In addition to its use as a learning aid, the text serves as a valuable reference in which topics are organized according to function and importance for the design of programs, interfaces or systems. This Second Edition has been updated to cover the most recent, relevant advances and developments affecting the MC68000 family of microprocessors.
Source:
The ColdFire is a descendant of the popular Motorola 68000 processor family. Those engineers familiar with the 68000 will feel right at home with the ColdFire processor. The instruction set and addressing modes are a subset, and the overall CPU core is similar. The processor register set is identical, although the stack pointer implementation differs.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Processors