The Motorola MC68010 processor is a 16/32-bit microprocessor from Motorola, made in the early 1980s.

It is largely similar to the Motorola 68000 CPU with the exception of the addition of several instructions for breakpoint and register control (ccr instead of sr), as well as the ability to save all of the processor state on an interrupt and exception. This made it possible to use the processor for virtual memory applications, for which the 68000 was unsuited (in detail: Contrary to the 68000 the 68010 was able to handle a double bus fault).

Additionally, the 68010 had a "loop mode", i.e. a mini instruction cache, which accelerates loops that consist of only 2 (or 3?) instructions. But the overall speed gain compared to the 68000 was below 10% in practice, so it did not make much sense to upgrade the 68000 CPU with its pin compatible successor.

The 68010 could be used with the 68451 MMU, but problems with the design, in particular a 1 clock memory access penalty made this configuration unpopular.and lead to other vendors such as Sun Microsystems using their own MMU design.

The 68010 was never as popular as the 68000 as the added complexity and cost turned out to not be worthwhile in practice. Most vendors looking for the MMU functionality waited for the 68020 instead. However due to a small speed boost over the 68000, it can be found in a number of Unix workstations and research machines. In addition, a special version was produced that was pin-compatible with the 68000, and was used in a number of Amiga machines in the 1980s.

External links

• 68010 images and descriptions at cpu-collection.de (http://www.cpu-collection.de/?tn=1&l0=cl&l1=68010)