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The History Of Pentium

Posted by Hemos on from the get-yer-geek-on dept.

yootje writes "ArsTechnica is running a story about the history of the Pentium processor. It starts with the original Pentium back in 1993, but it also handles the Pentium II and III. The article goes deep about how the processors are designed and work."

5 of 301 comments (clear)

  1. other sites: by RainbowSix · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here are some other cool CPU reference sites:
    www.sandpile.org
    Sandpile lists electrical specs for lots of CPUs and has links to lots of CPU documents.

    http://users.erols.com/chare/elec.htm
    Lots of info here about pinouts and electrical specs. I like this one because it lists the initial selling price for the CPUs as well.

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  2. Author has "no idea what was responsible for name" by crimson_alligator · · Score: 5, Informative

    The reason Intel broke with tradition and gave this chip a non-numeric name is because numbers cannot be copyrighted/trademarked.

    Anyone could sell a "586 Chip": competitive chip makers like AMD and Doritos.

    They switched to Pentium so nobody else could use the name.

  3. Re:Author has "no idea what was responsible for na by the+real+darkskye · · Score: 5, Informative

    Author also seems to believe that the P1 went up to 300Mhz, maybe with N2 cooling but I was under the impression it stopped at 233Mhz, with AMD taking SuperSocket 7 speeds to the 500Mhz mark

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  4. Pentium history minus nasty things? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's not a complete history as it didn't mentioned:

    - How Intel handle the Pentium bug. When the FP bug surfaced, Intel grudgingly agreed to replace Pentium chips if it affected a user significantly. My fellow grad student found out the hard way that his Pentium 90MHz he bragged about yielded wrong results in Matlab for his project. He complained to Intel and Intel wouldn't replace it since it was not important. He was a grad student in an engineering school... how was it NOT important to get accurate results? It took a long time and persistence and a threat to complain to BBB to get it replaced. I never trust Intel since.

    - Intel v. DEC. The article made it sound as all the architectural "innovations" in Pentium were the result of Intel's brilliance. What about the 10 patent infringements from Alpha that prompted DEC to sue Intel? There was a thread of this in another /. article about MS employee cracking AltaVista computers.

  5. Re:Where did the name come from? by robslimo · · Score: 5, Informative

    Lexicon Branding came up with the name as well as "Swiffer," "PowerBook" and others.

    It's a science, you see? Or at least a niche business.