Ah the pentium, aka 5-ium due to the penta- prefix. It is actually a nod from 4 to 5, but Intel wanted some cool name, and they decided penta + premium would sound cool, hence pentium.
But still, internally we call it i586, because that's the way it is. so is Pentium MMX which I reckon is called i686.
If I am correct, the Pentium Pro was the first "out of order" design. It specialized in 32-bit code, and did not handle 16-bit code very well.
The original Pentium I believe introduced a second pipeline that required a compiler to optimize for it to achieve maximum performance.
AMD actually made successful CPUs based on Berkeley RISC, similar to SPARC (they used register windows). The AMD K5 had this RISC CPU at its core. AMD bought NexGen and improved their RISC design for the K6 then Athlon.
> but Intel wanted some cool name, and they decided penta + premium would sound cool, hence pentium
some say that they tried to add 486 with 100 and the result had some numbers after the comma, that's why they named it pentium (yes, i know about the FDIV bug)
The years when Pentium came was a bit of an shitshow. As the article said, there were 7 companies producing 486 processors but after that the market was mostly Intel, AMD and little Cyrix. Then came socket-A vs. slot-A etc. Now looking back it seems like there was lot of changes in short period of time.
Things started progressing so fast in mid nineties that brand new top of the line computer was being matched in performance by low end offerings 2 years later. Lasted up to late 2000.
December 1998 $85 Celeron 300A handily beating June 97 $594 Pentium 233 MMX, not to mention overclocked one matching 1998 $621-824 Pentium 2s.
Another interesting episode "after the 486" was the switch from 32 bit to 64 bit, where Intel wanted to bury the ghost of the 8086 once and for all and switched to a completely new architecture (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IA-64), while AMD opted to extend the x86 architecture (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64). This was probably the first time that customers voted with their feet against Intel in a major way. The Itanium CPUs with the new architecture were quickly rechristened "Itanic" and Intel grudgingly had to switch to AMDs instruction set - that's the reason why the current instruction set still used by all "x86" CPUs is often referred to as AMD-64.
What I find interesting is that Intel engineers actually designed their own 64-bit extension, somewhere along the same lines as AMD64.
Intel's marketing department threw a fit, they didn't want the Pentium 4 competing with their flagship Itanium. Bob Colwell was directly ordered to remove the 64-bit functionality.
Which he kind of did, kind of didn't. The functionally was still there, but fused off when Netburst shipped.
If it wasn't for AMD beating them to market with AMD64, Intel would have probably eventually allowed their engineers to enable the 64-bit extension. And when it did come time to add AMD64 support to the Pentium 4 (later Prescott and Cedar Mill models) the existing 64-bit support probably made for a good starting point.
Well pentiums of course! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_All_About_the_Pentiums
Ah the pentium, aka 5-ium due to the penta- prefix. It is actually a nod from 4 to 5, but Intel wanted some cool name, and they decided penta + premium would sound cool, hence pentium.
But still, internally we call it i586, because that's the way it is. so is Pentium MMX which I reckon is called i686.
Trademarks
> The name invoked the number five, but was completely trademarkable, unlike the number 586.
i686 was the microarchitecture introduced with the Pentium Pro and then Pentium II.
If I am correct, the Pentium Pro was the first "out of order" design. It specialized in 32-bit code, and did not handle 16-bit code very well.
The original Pentium I believe introduced a second pipeline that required a compiler to optimize for it to achieve maximum performance.
AMD actually made successful CPUs based on Berkeley RISC, similar to SPARC (they used register windows). The AMD K5 had this RISC CPU at its core. AMD bought NexGen and improved their RISC design for the K6 then Athlon.
Small correction, Pentium Pro was the first OoO microprocessor from Intel. Others like IBM POWER1 came earlier
Very true, Bob Colwell was hired with past experience in this, I think from "Cyndrome" (edit: Multiflow).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38459128
I always figured the "-ium" part was in imitation of element naming, to make it sound scientific
Por qué no los dos? If "-ium" makes nerds think of an element name, and others of a premium product, all the better. I'd bet both of these interpretations were listed in the original internal marketing presentation of the name...
> but Intel wanted some cool name, and they decided penta + premium would sound cool, hence pentium
some say that they tried to add 486 with 100 and the result had some numbers after the comma, that's why they named it pentium (yes, i know about the FDIV bug)
I remember writing a cyberpunk story as a kid, in which everyone was rocking badass 786s.
The years when Pentium came was a bit of an shitshow. As the article said, there were 7 companies producing 486 processors but after that the market was mostly Intel, AMD and little Cyrix. Then came socket-A vs. slot-A etc. Now looking back it seems like there was lot of changes in short period of time.
Things started progressing so fast in mid nineties that brand new top of the line computer was being matched in performance by low end offerings 2 years later. Lasted up to late 2000.
December 1998 $85 Celeron 300A handily beating June 97 $594 Pentium 233 MMX, not to mention overclocked one matching 1998 $621-824 Pentium 2s.
January 2002 $120 Duron 1300/Celeron 1300 beating 2000 $1000 Athlon 1000/Pentium 3 1000-1133
June 2007 $40 Celeron 420 overclockable out of the box from stock 1.6 to 3.2GHz beat best $1000 CPUs of year 2005 (FX-57, P4 EE).
Same goes for Graphic chips starting around 1998/9.
Yea I'll take "Things that make me feel old for $1000 Alex."
Another interesting episode "after the 486" was the switch from 32 bit to 64 bit, where Intel wanted to bury the ghost of the 8086 once and for all and switched to a completely new architecture (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IA-64), while AMD opted to extend the x86 architecture (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64). This was probably the first time that customers voted with their feet against Intel in a major way. The Itanium CPUs with the new architecture were quickly rechristened "Itanic" and Intel grudgingly had to switch to AMDs instruction set - that's the reason why the current instruction set still used by all "x86" CPUs is often referred to as AMD-64.
What I find interesting is that Intel engineers actually designed their own 64-bit extension, somewhere along the same lines as AMD64.
Intel's marketing department threw a fit, they didn't want the Pentium 4 competing with their flagship Itanium. Bob Colwell was directly ordered to remove the 64-bit functionality.
Which he kind of did, kind of didn't. The functionally was still there, but fused off when Netburst shipped.
If it wasn't for AMD beating them to market with AMD64, Intel would have probably eventually allowed their engineers to enable the 64-bit extension. And when it did come time to add AMD64 support to the Pentium 4 (later Prescott and Cedar Mill models) the existing 64-bit support probably made for a good starting point.
Bob Colwell talks about this (and some of the x86 team vs Itanium team drama) in his quora answer and followup comments: https://www.quora.com/How-was-AMD-able-to-beat-Intel-in-deli...
I had one of those 133 MHz 486 chips, think it was AMD. Nice DOS gaming machine.