This listing is for a rare new-old-stock Signetics N8x300I microprocessor. 

Originally developed by Scientific Micro Systems as the SMS300, Signetics acquired rights to the chip and became its primary supplier. Signetics marketed it as the 8X300 Interpreter. The 8X300 was designed as an 8-bit high- speed bipolar Harvard architecture processor. The 8X300 had very powerful 16-bit instructions that had the power of up to five instructions of other 8-bit microprocessors. The 8X300 was very good at bit stream and bit manipulation operations. It was well suited to sophisticated controller and Interface applications. One of its primary uses was in disk drive controller systems. The follow-on 8X305 was binary compatible with the 8X300, but was faster, had more registers, and had better data handling capabilities.

The Signetics 8X300 was initially marketed under the trade name “The Interpreter”. The 8X300 was not an interpreter in the complier/interpreter sense, but did have some unusual instruction execution characteristics. The 8X300 was designed as a controller from the beginning. Signetics acquired the rights to produce the 8X300, which rounded out its product line. Signetics already had their own microprocessor, the 2650. Also, Signetics had the rights to the Intel 3002/1 bit-slice microprocessor. The 8X300 provided a strong solution for controlling and interfacing applications. Because of its ability to handle bit-streams, the 8X300 is sometimes classified as an early digital signal processor (DSP). The 8X300 is sometimes also referenced as a RISC-like microprocessor. While the 8X300’s instructions were all executed in one instruction cycle, the complexity of the instructions was not quite RISC-like. The 8X300 had eight major op codes, but their operands contained additional instruction information such that multiple operations actually occurred in a single instruction cycle.

The chip offered here is a never used new-old-stock Signetics N8x300I microprocessor. The 50 leads are tin and the body is purple ceramic with a gold lid. The chip is in excellent condition. This chip would  be a great addition to your microprocessor collection.