The Z80000 is a 32-bit expansion of the 16-bit Zilog Z8000 with multiprocessing capability, a six-stage instruction pipeline, and a 256-byte cache.
Described at the time as a "mainframe on a chip", the processor is in many ways an equivalent to Intel's 80386.
Delays in the initial manufacturing pushed back its availability date to after that of the 386, and the Z80000 only made it to a test sampling phase without ever being released commercially.
The processor has three methods of accessing memory: On the Z80000 CPU, interrupts are part of a category known as exceptions.
This category includes resets, bus errors, interrupts, and traps.