What Game Consoles and PCs used What CPUs, and the Historical Trends this Shows
After mainframes and minicomputers, came microprocessors, which housed the CPU on a single chip; this allowed computers to be made cheaper and smaller, which fueled the PC and video game boom.
Some highlights:
- Intel has been a major player since the earliest microprocessors: they successfully adapted to each industry transition, from 4 bit to 8, to 16, 32, to RISC-like, to 64, and are the dominant CPU vendor today. Most other CPU vendors were not successful after one of these industry transitions, so each era brought a different competitive landscape, yet Intel remained successful in each era.
- The MOS 6502 was hugely successful in the 8 bit era, but because a 16 bit successor wasn’t made until 8 years later, most 6502 customers used the Motorola 68000 in their next generation products, such as the Apple Macintosh. Then IBM PC compatibles took over the market, leaving Apple as one of the few survivors. For more on the 6502 see my 6502 and Commodore article.
- The Intel 8080 / Zilog Z80 were a major part of the video game boom of the 1970s and 80s, being used in many arcade cabinets, home consoles and gaming PCs of the era, especially in Japan.
- Game consoles frequently had the CPU of their predecessor as a coprocessor, so that last generation games can be played on the new console, such as the Game Boy Advance playing older Game Boy games. When playing new games this second CPU was often used for other tasks like sound processing. This doesn’t seem to be done anymore, with backwards compatibility now often done with a software emulator running on the console, or with ports of an old game to the new console.
