Probably has been said in part by others on these forums but I think two things might help improve Zilog's position:

1. Zilog needs to do some serious R&D to improve their product line. For a start, don't let other companies provide better Zilog cores (or at least keep up with them). Why should I get a better Z180 from AB Semicon or a better Super-8 (Z8) from Samsung or a better Z80 from Rabbit or Kawasaki? Also, keep across bleeding edge R&D such as Chuck Moore's GreenArray chips which have very simple, very fast multiple cores in a single package. Not saying that Zilog should do exactly that but a good example of a equivalent in a simpler package is the Parallax Propellor chip. Eight 32-bit RISC cores in a 40 pin DIP package with VGA output on-chip for $25. Cheap and developer-friendly.

2. Support open-source development. Atmel, Parallax and Microchip for example have great developer communities and open-source tools (hardware and software) easily available, especially for Linux. Atmel even supplies an open-source programming tool. Just visit hackaday.com to see how many projects use AVRs or PICs. I see very little non-Zilog support for Z8's even though the Z8 is a better core than the PIC.

All this will cost some money of course but some catching up with the competition needs to be done.

All I've seen from Zilog in the last couple of years is loss of staff and IP to Maxim as well as the loss of a lawsuit brought by Altera against Zilog.

Jonam

i dont like pics, it s such a mess to program even with tons of free tools.

r&d is fine , maybe some holes , but there is enough to show , it is just
a matter of marketing , i think.

Agreed, Zilog needs to catch up. That's one of the things I was trying to stress in another post. Their products cannot compete in the market right now.

The Green Arrays and Parallax chips are allright, but they're not mainstream, neither in their design nor in their tools. I'd love to see Zilog back on the bleeding edge with some interesting concepts, but they cannot replace a solid and competitive product line.

That was my point. Fundamentally, the Z80/ Z180 and Z8 cores must be fine because they are being made by so many other companies, its just that the high performance or innovative versions are not being made by Zilog. Even Chinese MP3 players are using (non-Zilog) Z80 cores.

If you look at the Encore XP range, they have all the peripherals that an AVR might have but they cannot approach 1 MIPs / MHZ that AVRs can nor can external Data memory be added. Once the product line gets competitive then the rest should follow.

eZ80 is 1mips/Mhz ?

Yes, eZ80 is 1MIPS/MHz. I was trying to compare eZ8 to AVR which are similar from a cost and functionality perspective but differ in how fast they can execute code. As an interesting aside. if you go through the Parallax forums, you will find that a complete Z80 single board CP/M computer (Zicog) has been implemented on a single Propellor chip plus 512K SRAM, EEPROM and SD interface and available assembled for $40 USD. Apparently the same board can run other emulations as well.

forums.parallax.com/forums/default.aspx?f=25&m=394297