Pentium microprocessor

The Pentium microprocessor is a brand of single chip computer that was introduced in 1993 by integrated circuit manufacturer Intel. It was the fifth generation of the x86 series which had begun in 1978 with the Intel 8086. It was considerably more powerful than its predecessors which had less than ten thousand transistors incorporated on their surfaces – the earliest Pentiums had over a million.

Competing manufacturers had brought out pin compatible chips which had the same names as the Intels and, as they executed the same instruction set, could be substituted for them. The next chip in the Intel series was to be named the 80586 but Intel chose to call it the Pentium as the name could be trade-marked to stop competitors from copying it. The most successful rival to the earliest Pentiums was the AMD K6 series.

Intel named their succeeding chips the Pentium 2, Pentium 3 and Pentium 4. The original is now called the Pentium 1. After Pentium 4, the last generation of the family (released in 2005) was named Pentium D. Its clock rate ranged from 2.66 GHz to 3.73 GHz.