Thursday, March 22nd 2007
Pentium celebrates 14th birthday
On March 22 1993, Intel shipped the very first Pentium processor, the 60MHz model imaginatively dubbed the 'P60'.
Pentium was the successor to the 486 processor. Intel had originally wanted to call the chip the 586, but couldn't get a trademark on the number. Rather than let AMD use the 586 name too, the company decided to switch to a word. Pentium is obviously based on the Greek pent, which is the word for five (hence pentathalon, pentagram etc).
The brand went through a number of iterations - Pentium II, III and IV, amazingly - before being killed off in favor of the Core brand that came into play in January 2006, after years of mediocre Pentium IV performance.
Source:
Bit-tech
Pentium was the successor to the 486 processor. Intel had originally wanted to call the chip the 586, but couldn't get a trademark on the number. Rather than let AMD use the 586 name too, the company decided to switch to a word. Pentium is obviously based on the Greek pent, which is the word for five (hence pentathalon, pentagram etc).
The brand went through a number of iterations - Pentium II, III and IV, amazingly - before being killed off in favor of the Core brand that came into play in January 2006, after years of mediocre Pentium IV performance.
26 Comments on Pentium celebrates 14th birthday
Happy Birthday Pentium :D, my 1st proc was a pentium4 ^_^
Unless Intel pulls out Core 2 Pentium....
btw, i don't care about virus or spyware i know which sitez have 'em and then visit 'em, but a tiny spyware can't hurt me. But just checking, did a scan, no spyware found
EDIT: I'M NOT stupid enough to click on smiley banners or pop-ups :p
How things have changed :)
The story of the ancient computers...
my first computer has a 120mhz Pent pro and 64mb ram. i still have the cpu(its now a kaychain)
i should research what specs that thing had
my friends father had the 6066 i beleive, not may people know about that one, that came with the TWENTY MB HDD
Was a 486, and thats pretty much all i remmember about it, except that it cost 2,500$ at first and then was upgraded somewhat to a 1GB HDD in 1997. Got lost in the moving a few years ago.
After that i got my second PC in late 2000, wich was a Pentium 3. My Pentium 4 in late 2004 and now im building my watercooled Quad-Core Q6600 in 2007.
Happy Birthday Pentium! The name Pentium wont be forgotten for at least a few years, now that they are going to make Core 2 Duo's with 1MB of cache and call them Pentium.
Yeah, FSB800, dual stripped down Conroe cores. Pentium lives... :rockout:
My second "PC" was a 6502 2Mhz, 32KB. This got upgraded to 4Mhz and 48KB.
My third PC was 486DX 25Mhz. This got upgraded to 66Mhz, then upgraded to 586 P60. Yes, the CPU was on a card (Compaq Deskpro M days) and the processor card could be swapped! The P60 then got upgraded to a P233MMX (?) via a socket 4 to 7 converter! This BEAST used to play DOOM very fast, together with a Matrox Millenium.
The SAME machine then got upgraded AGAIN using a AMD K6-III. It was very very expensive... and imported from Singapore. The cache on this thing made if FLY. BUT... the CPU burnt out after a few days of use. There was no "thermal" control... and like MANY OTHER PEOPLE, I suffered my very first CPU failure through a AMD K6-III fry. I have never bought AMD since. I know many people swear by AMD today... but people like me who were early adopters got burnt (literally) and went straight back to Intel.