Sega Master System/Hardware comparison

From Sega Retro

"8/16-bit" hybrid?

The Master System is most definitely not an "8/16-bit hybrid" system:

  • The Z80 has 16-bit arithmetic instructions, but its ALU is 4-bit, and its registers are 8-bit (though register pairs can be used to simulate 16-bit). It's universally considered an 8-bit CPU because the primary registers are 8 bits wide.
  • The Master System VDP does not have a 16-bit data bus, at least to the CPU. The VRAM might be wired up for 16-bit, but that isn't relevant here.
  • NEC's 780C is a second-sourced Z80. The use of 780C compared to Z80 is irrelevant here. Some systems might have a Z80 from a different supplier. (For comparison, the Ricoh 2A03 does have additional hardware that isn't present in the MOS 6502, e.g. sound generation.)