Pentium

n. pentium microprocessor, relatively new central processing unit from the Intel Corporation (Computers)

This article is about the original microprocessor. For CPU brands using the "Pentium" trademark (e.g. Pentium II, Pentium III, etc.) see Pentium (brand). For the hydrogen isotope, see Hydrogen-5. The Pentium brand refers to Intel's single-core x86 microprocessor based on the P5 fifth-generation microarchitecture considered here as such only. The name 'Pentium' was derived from the Greek penta, meaning 'five', and the Latin ending -ium. Introduced on March 22, 1993, the Pentium succeeded the Intel486, which number "4" signified the fourth-generation microarchitecture. Intel selected the Pentium name after courts had disallowed trademarking of names containing numbers - like "286", "i386", "i486" - though, sometimes, the Pentium is unofficially referred to as i586. In 1996, the original Pentium was succeeded by the Pentium MMX branded CPUs still based on the P5 fifth-generation microarchitecture.
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The Pentium III brand refers to Intel's 32-bit x86 desktop and mobile microprocessors (with the sixth-generation Intel P6 microarchitecture) introduced on February 26, 1999 and containing 9.5 million transistors. The brand's initial processors were very similar to the earlier CPUs branded Pentium II. The most notable difference was the addition of the SSE instruction set (to accelerate media processing and 3D graphics), and the introduction of a controversial serial number embedded in the chip during the manufacturing process.
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n. Pentium, pentium microprocessor, relatively new central processing unit from the Intel Corporation

n. Pentium, pentium microprocessor, relatively new central processing unit from the Intel Corporation (Computers)

<processor> Intel's superscalar successor to the 486. It has two 32-bit 486-type integer pipelines with dependency checking. It can execute a maximum of two instructions per cycle. It does pipelined floating-point and performs branch prediction. It has 16 kilobytes of on-chip cache, a 64-bit memory interface, 8 32-bit general-purpose registers and 8 80-bit floating-point registers. It is built from 3.1 million transistors on a 262.4 mm^2 die with ~2.3 million transistors in the core logic. Its clock rate is 66MHz, heat dissipation is 16W, integer performance is 64.5 SPECint92, floating-point performance 56.9 SPECfp92.
It is called "Pentium" because it is the fifth in the 80x86 line. It would have been called the 80586 had a US court not ruled that you can't trademark a number.
The successors are the Pentium Pro and Pentium II.
The following Pentium variants all belong to "x86 Family 6", as reported by "Microsoft Windows" when identifying the CPU:
Model Name 1 Pentium Pro 2 ? 3 Pentium II 4 ? 5, 6 Celeron or Pentium II 7 Pentium III 8 Celeron uPGA2 or Mobile Pentium III
A floating-point division bug was discovered in October 1994.
[Internal implementation, "Microprocessor Report" newsletter, 1993-03-29, volume 7, number 4].
[Pentium based computers, PC Magazine, 1994-01-25].
(2003-09-30)