Developed by: Motorola
Launched: 1979

The m68000 is a 16/32-bit CISC processor from Motorola (with a 32-bit instruction set and registers, but a 16-bit data bus and ALU), which was released in 1976 and competed with Intel's x86 family during the 1980s.
It owes its name to the number of transistors it contains.
It was used in the first Apple Macintosh, Sharp X68000, Commodore Amiga, Sinclair QL, Atari ST, Sega Genesis (Mega Drive), Capcom System I (Arcade), AT&T Unix PC, Tandy Model 16/16B/6000, Sun Microsystems Sun-1, Sun-2, and Sun-3, NeXT Computer, NeXTcube, NeXTstation, and NeXTcube Turbo, Texas Instruments TI-89/TI-92 calculators, Palm Pilot (all models with Palm OS 4.x or earlier), and even the space shuttle.
The family includes the Motorola 68000 (first generation), 68020 and 68030 (second generation), 68040 (third generation), and 68060 (fourth generation) chips.
Although no modern desktop computer is based on 680x0 series processors, derivative processors are still widely used in embedded systems.