Panafacom (currently PFU) was a conglomerate of the Japanese companies—formed by Fujitsu, Fuji Electric and the Matsushita Group on July 2, 1973. They developed one of the first commercially available 16-bit microprocessors, the MN1610. The PANAFACOM Lkit-16 was a learning kit released in March 1977 to popularize Japan's first 16-bit single-chip microcomputer. The microcomputer was equipped with the nation's first 16-bit parallel high-performance single-chip processor (*1), developed by PANAFACOM in 1975.