6809

6809

While the 6502 began to take over the 6800's market, Intel was experiencing the same problem when the upstart Zilog Z80 began to steal sales from the Intel 8080. Intel did not consider this a major threat, as the 8080 had always been considered a bit of a "hack" and they were heavily invested in a new 32-bit design, the Intel iAPX 432. But as the Z80 began to seriously disrupt sales, and with the 432 still some way in the future, Intel responded by quickly introducing a small but practical upgrade of the 8080 as the 8085, which made it less expensive to use and more competitive with the Z80. They also began to design a series of 16-bit processors that widened the 8085—while retaining its original register granularity as a subset—and also greatly extended the available addressing modes, to alleviate register pressure, which emerged as the Intel 8086 in 1978.