Zilog upgrades flagship Z8 line; new architecture

Electronic News, March 16, 1998

Campbell, Calif.--Zilog's recent announcement of an upgrade to its flagship Z8 microcontroller core, called the Z8Plus core, is viewed by market observers as the next major evolution in the company's 8-bit MCU portfolio.

Zilog touted the introduction saying, "The Z8Plus core will become the standard core for new 8-bit microcontroller designs. The new core offers designers improvement over the existing Z8 line while retaining the same familiar instruction set and register-to-register architecture used in Z8 microcontrollers today.

The Z8Plus core offers several upgrades to the current Z8 core. Foremost is a reduced system clock division and a fixed instruction cycle time. The resulting performance increase is claimed to be nearly 50 percent, depending upon instruction mix. For example, a Z8Plus-based part at 10MHz has performance comparable to a 16MHz part in production today. This, along with design improvements, will also mean lower power and lower noise operation.

"We have taken this opportunity, starting from a clean sheet of paper, to incorporate many enhancements into the new Z8Plus core, said Mike Caldwell, Z8 product line VP. "The enhancements include much shorter interrupt latency, ability to write deterministic software (due to fixed cycle) for low-end DSP applications, and program counter rollover protection.

The first product offered with the Z8Plus core is the Z8E001, an OTP (one-time programmable) part with 1 kilobyte EPROM program storage, 64 bytes of register file, three timers (including PWM), and an analog comparator in an 18-pin package. Surface mount and thin packages are available. The emulator of the Z8E001 (Z8E00100ZEM) offers accurate emulation, EPROM programming, and includes a real time trace capability with source-level debugging.

A companion part that is also implemented with the Z8Plus core, the Z8E520, introduced Jan. 5, was developed for USB, PS/2, and serial mouse designs. Other application-specific products are planned for introduction later in the year and target motor control, battery charging, temperature control, and USB keyboard applications, to name a few.

Zilog develops, designs, and manufactures application specific standard products (ASSPs) for the data communication, peripherals, and consumer product markets.