The 68000 has 32-bit registers but only a 16-bit
ALU and
Intel's contemporary processors that make programming them
unpleasant. That means that a single directly accessed
array or structure can be larger than 64KB in size.
Addresses are computed as 32 bit, but the top 8 bits are cut
to fit the address bus into a 64-pin package (address and data
The 68000 has sixteen 32-bit
registers, split into data and
address registers. One address register is reserved for the
for any function except direct addressing. Only address
registers can be used as the source of an address, but data
registers can provide the offset from an address.
Like the
Zilog Z8000, the 68000 features a supervisor and
32 bits internally, making it faster and eliminating forced
segmentations.
Like many other CPUs of its generation, it can fetch the next
instruction during execution (2 stage
pipeline).
used in most of
Sega's early arcade machines, and in the
Variants of the 68000 include the
68HC000 (a low-power HCMOS
implementation) and the
68008 (an eight-bit data bus version
["The 68000: Principles and Programming", Leo Scanlon, 1981].
(2003-07-11)