Pentium (original)
It uses a very similar microarchitecture to the i486, but was extended enough to implement a dual integer pipeline design, as well as a more advanced floating-point unit (FPU) that was noted to be ten times faster than its predecessor.Some techniques used to implement this were based on the earlier superscalar Intel i960 CA (1989), while other details were invented exclusively for the P5 design.The dual integer pipeline design is something that had been argued being impossible to implement for a CISC instruction set, by certain academics and RISC competitors.[who?]In order to employ the dual pipelines at their full potential, certain compilers were optimized to better exploit instruction level parallelism, although not all applications would substantially gain from being recompiled.Intel spent resources working with development tool vendors, ISVs and operating system (OS) companies to optimize their products.[10]: 89 Intel at first planned to demonstrate the P5 in June 1992 at the trade show PC Expo, and to formally announce the processor in September 1992,[13] but design problems forced the demo to be cancelled, and the official introduction of the chip was delayed until the spring of 1993.[14][15] John H. Crawford, chief architect of the original 386, co-managed the design of the P5,[16] along with Donald Alpert, who managed the architectural team.[18] Intel's low-powered Bonnell microarchitecture employed in early Atom processor cores also uses an in-order dual pipeline similar to P5.This flaw, discovered in 1994 by professor Thomas Nicely at Lynchburg College, Virginia, became widely known as the Pentium FDIV bug and caused embarrassment for Intel, which created an exchange program to replace the faulty processors.All P5 series processors were affected and no fixed steppings were ever released, however contemporary operating systems were patched with workarounds to prevent crashes.The original design was reimplemented in newer processes and new features were added to maintain its competitiveness, and to address specific markets such as portable computers.Marking the switch to Socket 5, this was the first Pentium processor to operate at 3.3 volts, reducing energy consumption, but necessitating voltage regulation on mainboards.This module was a printed circuit board (PCB) with the CPU directly attached to it in a smaller form factor.After the introduction of the Pentium, competitors such as NexGen,[31] AMD, Cyrix, and Texas Instruments announced Pentium-compatible processors in 1994.
clock rateTechnology nodeMicroarchitectureInstruction setx86-16Transistors800 nm600 nm350 nmSocket 4Socket 5Socket 7Pentium OverDrivePentium IIPentium IIImicroprocessorPentium brandpipelinefloating-point unitPentium ProMMX instruction setCeleronsuperscalarIntel i960data busdata cachesoperating systemPowerPC 601SuperSPARCDEC Alpha 21064AMD 29050Motorola MC88110Motorola 68060Motorola 68040MIPS R4000laying-outtaped outJohn H. CrawfordVinod K. DhamLarrabeemultithreading64-bit instructionsvector processing unitBonnell microarchitecturegenericLexicon Brandingreduced instruction set computer64-bit2-way associativemicrocodevirtual 8086 modemultimediainstructions per secondAm5x86Pentium FDIV bugF00F bugsteppingstransistor-transistor logic800 nmBiCMOSlocal APIC350 nmwire bondingSocket 2Haifa, Israeloverflowsaturatesbranch predictorinput/outputprinted circuit boardheat spreadercity in Oregonstatic random-access memorylaptopsNexGenTexas InstrumentsCIO magazinePC MagazineCyrix 6x86AMD K5AMD K6National SemiconductorWinChipList of Intel CPU microarchitecturesList of Intel Pentium processorsCache on a stickinstruction set architectureIntel 82497Colwell, Robert P.Business WeekNew ScientistInfoWorldIEEE MicroACM Transactions on GraphicsMicroprocessor ReportZiff DavisWayback MachineIntel processorsProcessorsPentiumItaniumMicroarchitecturesChipsets32-bitP6 variant (Pentium M)P6 variant (Enhanced Pentium M)NetBurstx86-64PenrynNehalemWestmereSandy BridgeIvy BridgeHaswellBroadwellSkylakeCannon LakeSunny CoveCypress CoveWillow CoveGolden CoveBonnellSaltwellSilvermontGoldmontGoldmont Plus