Continuing the MC6800 Family Legacy

MC6800 Processor: Expanding Rochester’s Product Replication Solutions

Building on Rochester Electronics’ previous offering of replicated 8-bit Motorola products, we have now achieved another first-silicon success with the historic MC6800 processor.

The MC6800 was introduced by Motorola in 1974, alongside several peripheral devices that enabled first-generation computers to be built based on standard building blocks. The device’s tremendous success and influence is evident by the continued demand in the market. To support this demand, Rochester’s Design and Technology group replicated the silicon design from the seventies and ported it to an up-to-date process fab while duplicating output edge rates and preserving voltages enabling customers to preserve their board designs. Rochester has previously replicated several Motorola 8-bit MC6800 products including the MC6840, MC6850, MC6821, MC6802, and MC6809. These MCUs were typically used in conjunction with peripheral devices to form a system.

Why product replication?

From a customer perspective, the most important factor is that a replicated product drops into their system with no errata and no additional EMI. Unlike a lot of competing attempts to duplicate product, Rochester’s team matches output edge rates between the original product and the recreated product. We preserve as much of the original physical design as we possibly can while tuning the output edge rates to match across conditions. The significant advantage of Rochester’s replicated products is that our solutions ensure system software does not need to change, while simultaneously creating drop-in hardware solutions that minimize new qualification expenses.

Rochester Electronics continues to offer both the MC68020 and MC68040 processors, and are in the midst of replicating the MC68030 processor. The legacy of the MC68xxx processor line started in with the MC6800 via Motorola, continued through the MC68040, was discontinued by NXP in 2015, is now still alive and well at Rochester Electronics. We are preserving over 40 years of processor product history for our customers, now and in the future.