The Atari TT030 is a 32-bit version of the 16/32-bit Atari ST family. It was based on the Motorola 68030 running at 16 MHz, and ran both Atari TOS and (for a short time) a version of Unix known as TT/X.

Atari Corporation realized that to remain competitive, they needed to begin taking steps to exploit the power offered by other processors in the Motorola 68000 series. At that time, the best option was the 68020. It was the first true "thirty-two bit bus/thirty-two bit instruction" chip from Motorola. Unlike the original 68000 used in the STs, the 68020 was capable of fetching a 32-bit value in one cycle, while the older STs took two cycles to fetch a 32-bit value.

The TT was initially designed around the 68020 CPU, however as the project progressed, Atari Corp. realized that the 68020 was not the best option for the TT. The 68020 still lacked certain important features offered by the next successor in the 68000 line, the new 68030. The new 68030 featured a full 32-bit address/data bus and internal registers; separate Supervisor, User, Program, and Data virtual memory spaces; built-in memory-management hardware; and 256-byte on-chip instruction and data caches.