Launched in 1979 but not available until late 1980, the 68000 from Motorola was an attempt to recover lost ground after its earlier 6800 failed to sell in significant numbers, at least as a CPU for microcomputers.

It was one of the first 32-bit processors, although it only had a 16-bit address bus, which meant that Motorola called it a 16/32-bit processor. It was this that gave the Atari ST computer its name, with ST standing for "sixteen/thirty-two".

Often considered as a "high-end" processor, it was briefly considered by IBM for its PC, however at the time the decision was made Intel already had the 8088 in the market, whilst Motorola was not yet shipping its 68000 in any quantity.

It was however well suited to Unix, and so found its way into many Unix systems of the day, but perhaps it was most famous as the CPU in Commodore's Amiga, Atari's ST and Apple's Macintosh.