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.
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