300px, Image of the internals of a Commodore 64 showing the 6510 CPU (40-pin DIP, lower left). The chip on the right is the 6581 SID. The production week/year (WWYY) of each chip is given below its name. The MOS Technology 6510 is an

8-bit In computer architecture, 8-bit integers or other data units are those that are 8 bits wide (1 octet). Also, 8-bit central processing unit (CPU) and arithmetic logic unit (ALU) architectures are those that are based on registers or data buses of ...

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circu ...

MOS Technology MOS Technology, Inc. ("MOS" being short for Metal Oxide Semiconductor), later known as CSG (Commodore Semiconductor Group) and GMT Microelectronics, was a semiconductor design and fabrication company based in Audubon, Pennsylvania. It is mo ...

. It is a modified form of the very successful

6502 The MOS Technology 6502 (typically pronounced "sixty-five-oh-two" or "six-five-oh-two") William Mensch and the moderator both pronounce the 6502 microprocessor as ''"sixty-five-oh-two"''. is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by a small te ...

. The 6510 is widely used in the Commodore 64 (C64) home computer and its variants. The primary change from the 6502 is the addition of an 8-bit general purpose I/O port, although 6 I/O pins are available in the most common version of the 6510. In addition, the address bus can be made tristate and the CPU can be halted cleanly.

Use

In the C64, the extra I/O pins of the processor are used to control the computer's

memory map In computer science, a memory map is a structure of data (which usually resides in memory itself) that indicates how memory is laid out. The term "memory map" can have different meanings in different contexts. *It is the fastest and most flexible ...

bank switching Bank switching is a technique used in computer design to increase the amount of usable memory beyond the amount directly addressable by the processor in