Chuck Peddle

Charles Ingerham Peddle (born 1937) is an American electrical engineer best known as the main designer of the MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor; the KIM-1 SBC; and its successor the Commodore PET personal computer, both based on the 6502.

Born in Bangor, Maine USA, he worked in a radio station while in high school and joined the Marine Corps in 1955. He attended the University of Maine where he earned a BS degree in Engineering Physics. Afterwards, he went to work for General Electric working with time sharing systems. Later, he worked at Motorola from 1973 on the development of the 6800 processor.

Peddle recognized a market for an ultra-low-price microprocessor and began to champion such a design to complement the $300 Motorola 6800. His efforts were frustrated by Motorola management and he was told to drop the project. He then left for MOS Technology, where he headed the design of the 650x family of processors; these were made as a $25 answer to the Motorola 6800. The most famous member of the 650x series was the 6502, developed in 1976, which was priced at 15% of the cost of an Intel 8080, and was subsequently used in many commercial products, including the Apple II, Commodore VIC-20, Nintendo Entertainment System, Atari 8-bit computers and arcade video games, Oric computers and BBC Micro from Acorn Computers.

The 6502 microprocessor design was also modified to support other computers while maintaining backward compatibility. The 6507 was the CPU of the Atari 2600. The 6510 was used in the Commodore 64.

Peddle left the company in 1980 together with CBM financer Chris Fish to found Sirius Systems Technology. There, Peddle designed the Victor 9000 personal computer.