Do You Recognize These? Early 8-Bit Microprocessors

Nov. 3, 2021

Back in the 70s and 80s, 8-bit microprocessors were the building blocks for early PCs and embedded systems.

This is part of the Do You Recognize This series in the Electronic History section of our Series Library.

We have come a long way since the Intel 8008 was released in April of 1972. The early 8-bit microprocessors sparked the personal-computer (PC) revolution and allowed embedded systems to be compact and inexpensive compared to the minicomputers and mainframes of that era.

I actually worked with most of these chips and can recognize them by the register sets. Can you?

This slideshow gallery presents the register sets of the major processor chips of this era. Each is followed by a short description of the processor.

Did you like this slideshow? Want more? Let us know.

We are interested in your suggestions as well as your feedback. Check out the rest of the Do You Recognize These series.

About the Author

William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

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I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.

I still get a hand on software and electronic hardware. Some of this can be found on our Kit Close-Up video series. You can also see me on many of our TechXchange Talk videos. I am interested in a range of projects from robotics to artificial intelligence.