Slashdot Mirror
The History Of Pentium
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."
Really, who came up with the name "Pentium"?
I remember back in the day when my family got a brand new computer with this strange device called a Pentium...And it had Windows 95 installed! This was huge, considering our previous computer had a version of Windows from the mid-80's...Anyway, excuse the rant, it's what I think of when I hear "Pentium 1"
Although I grew up on an Atari ST520, later upgraded to a 1040 (eleet) a Packard Bell-produced P60 with 8MB of RAM and a 420MB HD was my first computer, obtained in late 1993. Windows 3.11. Lotta fond memories, even if some of them involve a lot of cursing and head-scratching, most at Windows. Occasionally some weird piece of proprietary Packard Bell technology would rear its head but on the whole it wasn't too bad of a computer.
That computer was eventually donated to FreeGeek - I still have the Atari, though.
Exocet Industries - Taking over the world, one computer at a
Back in 1993
Was that sooooo long ago? I never had an original pentium, as I usually find the cost/performance not usually worth the upgrade and I therefore usually skip a processor generation or so.
- 8086 or was it 8088
- Mac II (i know, it's not a PC, but it kicked ass, and even though I don't have an apple now, I still believe that they are some very nice machines)
- 486 dx-2 66 (now that was a cool sounding name)
- Pentium II (300 mhz)
- Pentium 4 (1.7 & 3.2 Ghz)
Thing is, why do most of us need all of this power? The only thing that has really driven my upgrades has been the ability to play games. Excel worked fine on a PII (even usuing features most 'business' users don't like regression analysis, formulas, etc)Word processors worked fine as well, in fact I miss some of the older processors that didn't try to autoformat every damned thing
Web browsers as well
I know there are security issues with alot of older softwares, etc, but can't they produce a fast low cost computer, w/o all of the bloat. Then everyone could afford a decent computer to do 99.9% of the things they wan't to.
My cousin just bought a $2000 computer and all he want's to do is occasionally surf, rip mp3's and DVD's - could this be done on a pentium or pentium II platform.
Did, I go way offtopic, it's monday.
I work with a lot of old Intel machines and my general rule of thumb is:
You need something running at 75Mhz to play an MP3
You need something running at 100Mhz to encode an MP3 in less time than it takes to play it.
You need something running at 500Mhz to play a DVD
You need something running at 1Ghz to encode video on the fly.
(note: I know I've played a DVD on a 466Mhz machine, but there are some "complicated" DVDs that take just a little bit more horsepower, so that's why I chose 500Mhz as the cutoff point)
My gut feel is that Mac's can probably do these things with a little bit less (10%?) Mhz since their processor arch. seems to be a bit more efficient.
Intel brought us ...the deliberately misleading "the P-III makes your Internet faster!!"
God I remember the hype and FUD those B******ds stirred up with that bloddy ad campaign. I can still hear people walking up to me and asking: "Do you have a PC? What's your pentium?". Calm, calm, think happy... "Two OK!! It's two! And tell all your friends you need a pentium or your computer won't work! BEGONE EWES!!" It hurt to hear that again and again. I just gave up correcting people. They looked at me like I was crazy. Geeze listen to this guy, he dosen't know what a pentium is.
If Intel learned anything in those last few years of the P6 core's life, it learned that clock speed sells
It certainly does, and that's still the one thing that keeps me from buying AMD. When I configure a PC I can choose between a Pentium 2.2GHz, or an AMD 2400. Now how fast is the 2400? I don't know, It didn't say, and that's why AMD is No. 2. That and Intels hugely successful campaign of intel inside, making consumers believe that if hasn't got an intel chip, it won't work. They expect it, like they expect a monitor. Let them pay for their ignorence.
May the Maths Be with you!
This is the part of hell where one has to use Java products....
I have a 800MHz Pentium based T20 running Websphere Studio Application Developer. 512 MB of RAM. I'm using 1GB of virtual memory when I run my programs. My CPU regularly spikes through to 100%. Its hell on earth. Wait a minute. Maybe I'm dead and in hell, since this misery seems to be constant....
So the answer to your question about why we need all this power is ...Java.
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
And to think... my uncle is still using his 75MHz Pentium every day. The funny thing is it still fits his needs and sees no reason to upgrade. It takes forever to boot up and get into his AOL account, but he just leaves the room for a while... watches tv... grabs a snac... and by then it should be there for him. I have been trying to convince him to upgrade for years, but I guess you could say he is getting his moneys worth.
I grew up on an Atari ST520, later upgraded to a 1040 (eleet)
;)
Funny, My first PC was the Atari 1040ST with the PC-Ditto hardware mod. Yup, I soldered that NEC V20 daughter board right on top of the 68000 CPU. Funny thing, since the ST didn't have the same hardware limitation the PC had, My Atari turned PC had 704K base memory free... (704K should be enough for anybody, right?