what is pentium?

Answer 1

The Pentium is a fifth-generation x86 architecture microprocessor from Intel, developed by Vinod Dham. It was the successor to the 486 line, and was first shipped on March 22, 1993.

The Pentium was expected to be named 80586 or i586, to follow the naming convention of previous generations. However, Intel was unable to convince a court to allow them to trademark a number (such as 486), in order to prevent competitors such as Advanced Micro Devices from branding their processors with similar names (such as AMD's Am486). Intel enlisted the help of Lexicon Branding to create a brand that could be trademarked. The Pentium brand was very successful, and was maintained through several generations of processors, from the Pentium Pro to the Pentium Extreme Edition. Although not used for marketing purposes, Pentium series processors are still given numerical product codes, starting with 80500 for the original Pentium chip.

Intel has now largely retired the Pentium brand and replaced it with the "Intel Core" brand, although a future line of value processors will use the Pentium and Celeron brands[1]. The first Intel Core, released in January 2006, extended the Pentium M microarchitecture. The Intel Core 2, released in July 2006, features the new Intel Core microarchitecture.

Microsoft and many other companies use the original Pentium as a standard for specifications of requirements. For example, Microsoft's stated requirements for the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition, include (at least) a Pentium processor running at a clock speed of 600MHz (required), or 1GHz (recommended). To find out if another processor meets the requirement, a conversion must be used that gives its speed in terms of standard Pentium clock rates. For example, a Pentium Pro would meet the requirement running at a much lower clock speed, because of its more advanced architecture. An equivalency chart is usually used to compare more modern processors to find out if they meet this requirement.

In programming, it is sometimes necessary to distinguish the original Pentium processor architecture from later (P6 or P68-based) Pentium-branded architectures. For these cases, i586 is is a common, though spurious, way to refer to the early Pentium processors, as well as processors made by Intel's competitors that can run machine code targeted to the early Pentiums.

Superscalar architecture - The Pentium has two datapaths (pipelines) that allow it to complete more than one instruction per clock cycle. One pipe (called "U") can handle any instruction, while the other (called "V") can handle the simplest, most common instructions. The use of more than one pipeline is a characteristic typical of RISC processors designs, the first of many to be implemented on the x86 platform, thus signaling the road to take, and showing that it was possible to merge both technologies, creating almost “hybrid” processors.
64-bit data path - This doubles the amount of information pulled from the memory on each fetch. This doesn't mean that the Pentium can execute 64-bit applications; its main registers are still 32 bits wide.
MMX instructions (later models only) - A basic SIMD instruction set extension designed for use in multimedia applications.

Pentium architecture chips offered just under twice the performance of a 486 processor per clock cycle. The fastest Intel 486 parts were almost the same speed as a first-generation Pentium, and the AMD Am5x86 was roughly equal to the Pentium 75.

The earliest Pentiums were released at the clock speeds of 66 MHz and 60 MHz. Later on 75, 90, 100, 120, 133, 150, 166, 200, and 233 MHz versions gradually became available. 266 and 300 MHz versions were later released for mobile computing. Pentium OverDrive processors were released at speeds of 63 and 83 MHz as an upgrade option for older 486-class computers.

Intel has retained the Pentium trademark for naming later generations of processor architectures, which are internally quite different from the Pentium itself:

Pentium Pro
Pentium II
Pentium III
Pentium 4
Pentium M
Pentium D
Pentium Extreme Edition
Pentium E1000
It can be seen from this that brand name is only loosely related to the nature of a CPU's microarchitecture. The Pentium brand is traditionally used for desktop and notebook parts, the Celeron brand is used for "value" parts (typically lower performance and lower price), and the Xeon brand is used for high-performance parts suitable for servers and workstations. The same basic microarchitecture may be used for all brands, but implementations may differ in clock speeds, cache sizes, and package and sockets. Moreover, the same name is used for chips with unrelated microarchitectures.

The Intel Core processor uses the same microarchitecture as the Pentium M processors, but discards the Pentium M name (and also uses Intel's new logo). However the Pentium name will continue to be used in a new line of Core 2-derived processors. These processors, codenamed Conroe-L, will be marketed as the Pentium E1000 series. The new Pentium will have 1 MB of L2 cache and use an 800 MHz FSB, Intel EM64T technology, Execute Disable Bit, and will be a single-core processor.

Answer 2

Well, there have been some pretty detailed answers here, but judging by the question, I'm guessing it's a little over your head. Put simply, "Pentium" is a brand name of a processor chip manufactured by Intel. It's kind of like saying a Camry, which is made by Toyota.

Also, not trying to be rude, just fyi, this is the type of question that could have been easily and quickly answered by typing "pentium" into google or some other search engine, or look up on wikipedia.org, you would have found a wealth of information without having to wait for anyone to answer.

Answer 3

pentium

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
(ftp://ftp.isi.edu/pub/carlton/pentium/FAQ) 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)


The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2005 Denis Howe
Jargon File - Cite This Source
pentium

n. The name given to Intel's P5 chip, the successor to
the 80486. The name was chosen because of difficulties Intel had in
trademarking a number. It suggests the number five (implying 586)
while (according to Intel) conveying a meaning of strength "like
titanium". Among hackers, the plural is frequently `pentia'. See
also Pentagram Pro.

Intel did not stick to this convention when naming its P6 processor
the Pentium Pro; many believe this is due to difficulties in
selling a chip with "sex" in its name. Successor chips have been
called `Pentium II' and `Pentium III'.

Answer 4

Pentium is old, crap processor. Get at LEAST a Pentium 3, and a Pentium 4, if you can afford it. AMD Athlon is better deal for a given price, too.

Answer 5

The Pentium is a fifth-generation x86 architecture microprocessor from Intel, developed by Vinod Dham. It was the successor to the 486 line, and was first shipped on March 22, 1993.

Answer 6

Pentium is the brand name of a product manufactured by Intel. It refers to the central processing unit inside of a computer.

Answer 7

Intel made some microprocessors

8080
8086
80286
386
486
586 pentium was a nother name for that one

Answer 8

Intel's name for their cpu family. Now, Intel is naming all new cpu family Intel Core 2 Duo or some variants Core 4 Duo.

Answer 9

It is an old computer CPU chip made by intel it used socket 5 and 7

Answer 10

i presumed its from some years in the past yet then i regarded back and observed its new! nicely which ability the two are 2d surpassed so i will pass with twin middle one, in spite of if the two have been new. only close your eyes and decide twin middle one