Designing SOCs with Configured Cores

1.3. Third Time’s a Charm

Intel finally got it right in April, 1974 when the company introduced its third microprocessor, the 8-bit 8080. The 8080 microprocessor had a non-multiplexed bus with separate address and data lines. Its address bus was 16 bits wide, allowing a 64-Kbyte address range. The data bus was 8 bits wide. As shown in Figure 1.5, Intel used a 40-pin DIP to house the 8080 microprocessor. This larger package and the microprocessor’s faster 2-MHz clock rate finally brought bus bandwidth up to usable levels. Other microprocessor vendors such as Motorola and Zilog also introduced microprocessors in 40-pin DIPs around this time and system designers finally started to adopt the microprocessor as a key system building block.

Figure ...