AMD Am9080

The Am9080 is a CPU manufactured by AMD. It was originally produced without a license as a clone of the Intel 8080, reverse engineered by Shawn and Kim Hailey by photographing an early Intel chip and developing schematic and logical diagrams from the images.

In initial production, the chips cost about 50 cents to make, yielding 100 chips per wafer, and were sold on the military market for $700 each. The first versions of the Am9080 were available in April 1974. This CPU operated at a speed of 2 MHz.

Subsequently, an agreement was made with Intel to become a licensed secondary source for the 8080, allowing chips from both manufacturers to enter markets that would not accept a single-source part.