Founded in 1974 by Federico Faggin, the inventor of the world's first microprocessor, ZiLOG builds semiconductor products that enable design engineers to break through the barriers to creativity and innovation in embedded design. ZiLOG is the inventor of the award-winning Z80 and Z8 microchip architectures that have been embedded in over a billion end-use devices worldwide. Companies get more innovative products to market faster because ZiLOG products and design tools help them turn their imagination into consumer appliances, remote controls, vending machines, telecommunications controllers, home automation systems, spacecraft instrumentation, industrial automation systems, and thousands of other products.

Within the five broad product segments of the semiconductor market, which includes micro-logic, other logic, memory, analog and discrete devices, ZiLOG 's products are focused primarily in the micro-logic device segment. Micro-logic devices are processor-based semiconductors that include microprocessors, microcontrollers and digital signal processors that process information, output data or control signals according to programmed instructions and various external inputs. ZiLOG designs, manufactures and markets both general-purpose and application specific standard products (ASSPs). ASSPs are tailored for a specific application but are not proprietary to a single customer, while general-purpose products are neither application nor customer specific. Most of our products focus today on micro-logic devices used in embedded control, primarily 8--bit microcontrollers. In turn, 8-bit microcontrollers are embedded into literally hundreds of different end-use applications. ZiLOG supplies products into most of these applications, including consumer electronics and appliances, building control, factory automation, financial transaction processing, computer peripherals, and the automotive after-market. The total embedded control market is robust and highly diversified across hundreds of different end-use applications.

Within our target markets ZiLOG has a rich history of enabling innovative new products, with an embedded base of applications and firmware (programming code). We continue to reinvent our core product lines, most recently with the introduction of the Z8 Encore! and eZ80 Acclaim! families of Flash microcontrollers. These families offer excellent performance and ease of use. ZiLOG has continued to integrate more and more system functionality into its microcontroller families, making today's devices true Systems-on-Chip (SoC). This integration includes analog functions such as analog-to-digital converters, communications functions such as UARTS, SPI, I2C and Ethernet, and fail-safe functions such as watch dog timers, brown out detect and power on reset. Simultaneously, ZiLOG has championed the provision of much larger and more flexible on chip RAM and program memory, to handle more complex programs and increasing use of C-programming languages.

More recently, ZiLOG has made major investments in upgrading its complete development tools suite, and additional value added software. ZiLOG's Developer Studio II suite of tools includes an integrated development environment (IDE), librarian, linker, assembler, debugger and C-compiler and is used across all new products families. ZiLOG is also supported by a number of 3rd party development tools suppliers, where additional high end functionality such as trace buffers and complex interrupt debug are required. ZiLOG is now introducing a variety of royalty free software stacks for use with its microcontrollers, focusing on communications protocols such as TCP/IP and IrDA. All of our tools and software are optimized to take advantage of the inherent performance of our underlying microcontroller architecure. Together the tools and silicon constitute highly integrated solutions. Therefore improving development cycles, all at a low 8-bit system cost.

ZiLOG is also investing in several specific end use application markets. ZiLOG is the leading supplier of controllers for Universal Infra Red (UIR) remote controls. We have achieved this position by combining optimized, low cost silicon, together with a superb IR Remote code database and extensive application software. Together these elements provide a complete, integrated solution for UIR customers, enabling them to get to innovative new products to market faster. ZiLOG is implementing a similar integrated model in other target end use markets including Point of Sale, Building Security Systems, Consumer Appliances, PC peripherals, and the automotive after market.

ZiLOG is headquartered in San Jose, California, and maintains design centers in San Jose, California; Meridian, Idaho; Seattle, Washington; and Bangalore, India. ZiLOG also operates a test operation in Manila, Philippines. It has 26 direct sales offices and more than 120 distributor locations worldwide.