At the risk of exposing you to how ancient I am, I thought it would be fun to compare our new SAM4L MCU to an old Z-80.
I was inspired to do this as a parsed the datasheet and saw that the SAM4L can use only 90uA/MHz. So the Z-80 was a 4-MHz CPU, so the Atmel chip could knock out 4-MHz with 650uA. That’s a third of a milliampere. And that is not even a good comparison, since the Z-80 was a 5V part. But the Z-80 sucked up 60mA at 5V.
And a Z-80 was just a CPU, you still needed to add memory, and peripherals like UARTS, DMA, and PIO chips. So really saying a SAM4L at 4MHz sucks 650uA at 3 volts versus 60mA at 5 volts does not even begin to tell how much better the SAM4L is in terms of power management.
The venerable ancient Z-80 microprocessor, designed by Frederico Faggin in 1976.
At least all the heat pouring out of a Z-80 heat keeps the plastic dry.
Wrong, the SAM4L min comsumption is not 360uA @ 4Mhz, but 650uA (read datasheet fig 42.1), still better than Z80.
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Point of view.
It would be better to compare Z80 to i8008 or i8080. I was working with all and the Z80 was a small miracle. Only one IC instead of three, one 5V supply, crystal clear architecture. Optimal design for paradigm of that time.
I like to start new designs with the Cortex today, their speed-power product are phenomenal and the price unbelievable. But designing with Z80 thirty five years ago was maybe more funny. It was challenge, now it is Lego.
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