Motorola 68060

The 68060 is a 32-bit microprocessor from Motorola, and is the successor to the Motorola 68040. The 68060 is the highest performance 680x0 family processor available. It has 2 to 3 times the performance capability of the 68040.

The 68060 was the last development of the 680x0 series for general purpose use, abandoned in favour of the PowerPC chips. It saw use in some late-model Amiga machines, but Apple Computer and the Unix world had moved onto various RISC platforms.

Perhaps its most memorable use was in American broadcast television graphics. Chyron[?]'s Infinit!, Max!, and Maxine! series of television character generators[?] used the 68060 as the main processor. These character generators were a fixture in any self-respecting American television network affiliate station.

Developments of the basic core continue, intended for embedded systems. Here they are combined with a number of peripheral interfaces to reduce the overall complexity and power requirements of a design. A number of chips, each with different sets of interfaces, are sold under the name ColdFire[?] and Dragonball.

For more information on the instruction set and architecture, see Motorola 68000.