Released in 1990 from Motorola, it was one of the first "true" 32-bit Microprocessors for home use, sharing this title with Intel's 386DX (the status of the 68030 is debated because it was never deamed 32-bit "clean"). It shipped in speeds of 16, 25, 33, 50, and 66 megahertz, but the 50's and 66's were actually on par with low end Pentium chips, and with the use of special crystals could be overclocked to 80mHz.

To this day it is the proccessor that runs the US Military Cruise Missles, Torpedoes and Patriot Missles.

The 68040 was also the last 68k chip used in Macintosh computers, before Apple changed to the more sophisticated PowerPC architecture. The latest iteration of the PowerPC is the MPC7450.

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