Motorola 6800 - Motorola's History in Semiconductors

Motorola's History in Semiconductors

Galvin Manufacturing Corporation was founded in 1928 in Chicago, Illinois and produced their first Motorola brand car radio in 1930. The company name was changed to Motorola in 1947. A research and development center was opened in Phoenix, Arizona in 1949 and they began commercial production of transistors at a new $1.5 million facility in Phoenix in 1955. In 1966 an integrated circuit facility was built in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa. In 1973, they announced plans to build a new plant in Austin, Texas to manufacture MOS integrated circuits. The microprocessor group moved from Mesa to Austin in 1975.

Motorola's transistors and integrated circuits were used in-house for their communication, military, automotive and consumer products and they were also sold to other companies. In the 1960s, Motorola sold a full line of digital ICs that were used in computers, test equipment and industrial controls. By 1970 they were producing metal-oxide semiconductors (MOS) LSI chips as standard products and custom circuits. They also produced semiconductor memories that were used in calculators, point-of-sale terminals and computers. Motorola's sales had reached $1.2 billion in 1973 and they had 64,000 employees. The Semiconductor Products Division (SPD) had sales of $419 million and was the second largest semiconductor company after Texas Instruments. Intel was founded in 1968 and had sales of $66 million in 1973.

In the early 1970s Motorola started a project that developed their first microprocessor, the MC6800. This was followed by single chip microcontrollers such as the MC6801 and MC6805. In 1979 the 16-bit version of the MC 68000 microprocessor was introduced; this processor was extended to 32 bits with the MC 68020 in 1983.

In 1999 Motorola spun off their analog IC, digital IC and transistor business to ON Semiconductor of Phoenix Arizona. In 2004 they spun off their microprocessor business to Freescale Semiconductor of Austin, Texas.