CHUCK PEDDLE 1937–2019
CHUCK PEDDLE, DESIGNER OF THE 6502 CHIP, HAS PASSED AWAY, AGED 82
We pay tribute to the designer of the 6502 microprocessor
Without the skill and determination of Chuck Peddle – the engineer who designed the ultra-low-cost 6502 microprocessor – who knows where computing would be today. After all, his $25 chip helped bring computers to the masses, powering a host of iconic products made by Apple, Acorn and Commodore among others, making him something of an unsung hero.
The plan was to take an expensive processor board and boil it down into an affordable integrated circuit. And yet it very nearly didn’t happen. When Chuck’s employer, Motorola, listened to the proposal in 1974, it was promptly rejected amid fears that it would rival the company’s $300 6800 processor.
Undeterred, Chuck and seven other Motorola engineers took the development to rival company MOS Technology, leading to the 6501, a lawsuit by Motorola and the iconic 1MHZ 6502. It is for this that Chuck will be forever remembered. Born on 25 November 1937, he sadly passed away on 15 December last year having lost his battle with pancreatic cancer. He was aged 82.
“Chuck Peddle’s 6502 came to dominate the 8-bit home micro market mainly because of its low price point,”
recalls British computer scientist Steve Furber who led the final design and production of the BBC Micro.
“Acorn had used the 6502 processor in the System 1 and Atom computers [prior to the Micro] and it had good real-time performance. Our experience of the chip fed directly into our production of the ARM processor because we had been dissatisfied with the early 16-bit processor offerings. I think it is fair to say that the ARM owes a lot to the 6502.”
The Atari 2600, Atari 8-bit family, Commodore 64 and Apple II were among other computers to incorporate the MOS Technology 6502 and variants at their heart and the chip sold for roughly 15% of the price of rival processors from Motorola and Intel. It would also go head-to-head with the Zilog Z80 in offering highperformance computing at an affordable price. Chuck’s plan had proven revolutionary.
When MOS was acquired by Commodore in 1976, Chuck stayed with the company. He had just finished working on the 6502-based KIM-1 singleboard computer and he used this to convince Commodore’s boss Jack Tramiel that the microcomputer market offered great riches. Chuck then went on to design the Commodore PET which became the company’s first mass-market computer.
“By designing the MOS Technologies 6502 microprocessor and creating the Commodore PET microcomputer, Chuck Peddle did much more than build a successful product – he helped enable a whole industry of software developers and [made] software products affordable and usable by ordinary people, not just large companies,” Daniel Fylstra tells us, having received one of the first PETS when he was Byte magazine’s new products editor in 1977.
A falling out with Jack Tramiel prompted Chuck to turn entrepreneur. He cofounded Sirius Systems Technology with former Commodore Business Machines financier Chris Fish in 1980 and acquired Victor Business Systems two years later. Chuck developed and released the innovative computer, the Victor 9000 (or ACT Sirius 1 as it was known in the UK). Based on the Intel 8080 processor, it competed against IBM’S
PC and boasted a 12-inch monochrome monitor, two 5.25-inch disk drives and 128K RAM. Later in his career, Chuck created the company NNA Corporation and he worked for Tandon Corporation in the late Eighties, developing a portable hard drive. He also worked on repairing memory chips for reuse. But his role as the father of the personal computer is what he’ll be remembered for most and, given its impact, quite rightly so.
He helped enable an industry of software developers and [made] software products affordable
Daniel Fylstra