How AMD's Am9080, an Intel 8080 clone, ignited a 50-year CPU rivalry

Fifty years ago, in 1975, AMD released its first processor, the Am9080—a reverse-engineered take on Intel’s 8080. It wasn’t an original design, but that clone became a launchpad, turning cents into millions and setting the stage for a decades-long rivalry that still defines the CPU market.

The Am9080 story began in 1973, when three engineers—Ashona Haley, Kim Haley, and Jay Kumar—took microscope photos of an Intel 8080 sample during their final shift at Xerox. From roughly 400 detailed images, they reconstructed schematics and logic diagrams, then shopped the package around Silicon Valley. AMD bit, opting to manufacture the processor using its new N-channel MOS technology. By 1974, the first Am9080 samples were ready; in 1975, the chip entered mass production.

The economics read like a startup fantasy: AMD’s cost per chip was about 50 cents, while sales went for $700—primarily to military customers who required reliable microprocessors from a second source. That requirement soon shielded AMD from legal skirmishes with Intel. In 1976, the companies signed a cross-licensing agreement that officially allowed AMD to produce the 8080 under its own name. The deal cost AMD $25,000 upfront and $75,000 annually, but what mattered more was the market access and legitimacy it conferred. In hindsight, it looks like a pragmatic masterstroke.

The Am9080 became the foundation on which AMD built its processor ambitions. Over time, the company released dozens of variants with clock speeds from 2 to 4 MHz and operating temperatures ranging from −70 to 125 °C. Thanks to a more advanced process, AMD made the die smaller and faster than the original Intel 8080. Eventually, the company moved on to its own architectures—no longer copying, but competing.

Half a century later, the Am9080 is a reminder that the start of a great tech race can owe as much to risk, guile, and timing as to breakthrough genius. There’s a fitting irony in the fact that a “pirate” clone of the 8080 sparked the duel that still shapes the processor landscape.