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."

Comments

Where did the name come from?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, who came up with the name "Pentium"?

Re:Where did the name come from?

[Kainaw]

Damn. Hit a single < as you submit and you lose a whole paragrah... What I meant was:

I always thought it was obvious.

286... 386... 486... 586... No, Penta=5, so Pentium. Now, why didn't they call the Pentium II Sexium?

And yes, for the mega-geeks, I do know that I'm mixing the Greek Penta prefix with the Latin Sex prefix, but Hexium just isn't as funny.

Dusty

[Prince Vegeta SSJ4]

Geez, I'm starting to feel old.

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.

Intel_Dominance == Smarter_Marketing

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

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.