Pentium is a brand used to name x86 based Intel microprocessors. Pentium series CPU’s are launched in 1993 and produced about 27 years. During these 27 years a lot of different versions of the Pentiums are created. The popularity of the Pentium microarchitecture and CPU’s make it last for a lot of time as brand name but in 2011 Intel has named and branded their latest CPUs with i3, i5,i7 series.
Currently from price and performance point of view Pentium processes are located between Atom, Celeron and Core i3,i5 and i7,9 series where Atom and Celeron provide less performance then Pentium processor. But Core i3, i5, i7 and i9 provides better performance at a higher price.
What Does Pentium Mean?
Pentium is a Greek word which is derived from the penta meaning five. The ium is also a Latin ending in order to express the generation of the microprocessor which is next of the 8086 and 80486 or fourth version.
Pentium History
In order to understand the Pentium brand, we need to look at its history with products and features. Here we will list all the main versions of the Pentium processors.
Pentium
Pentium is the name of the brand and the first version of this brand. It is launched in 1992 and these processors are manufactured with 800, 600, 350 nm technologies. Pentium provides 66 MHz clock speed. There is also Pentium Overdrive which supports more socket types like Socket 2, Socket 3, etc.
Pentium Pro
Pentium Pro is the more advanced and faster version of the Pentium where it provides 200 MHz clock speeds. Pentium Pro is released in 1995. Pentium Pro is manufactured with 600 and 350 nm technologies with new socket type support Socket 8.
Pentium MMX
Pentium MMX provides extra features about some multimedia tasks like encoding and decoding. Pentium MMX also provides some extra speed with 233 MHz clock speed and manufactured with 350 nm technology.
Pentium II
Pentium II is the major update to the Pentium series with a 450 MHz clock speed which is about two times faster than previous version. Pentium II is released in 1997. Pentium II is manufactured with 350 and 250 nm technologies. Pentium supports different socket types like Slot1, MMC-1, MMC-2, Mini-Cartridge, PPGA-B615.
Pentium III
Pentium III is a major update to the Pentium II with a lot faster clock speeds. Pentium III is released in 1999. Pentium III provides 1400 MHz clock speed by using 250 and 130 nm manufacturing technologies. Pentium III Xeon is created with more enterprise features for servers and workstations. Mobile Pentium III is designed for mobile devices like laptops and terminals with less power consumption.
Pentium 4
Pentium 4 is created in 2000 as a major update to Pentium III. Pentium 4 provides 3800 MHz clock speeds which are near to the practical limit of CPU clock frequency. Pentium 4 is created with 180 and 65 nm technologies. Pentium 4 can be used with Netburst socket type. Netburst feature doubles the instruction pipeline and improves the L1 and L2 cache performance. Pentium 4 Extreme Editon is created for higher performance and clock speeds with overclocking. Another big feature of the Pentium 4 is a 64-bit architecture. Both 32 and 64 bit OS and software can run on Pentium 4.
Pentium D (Dual-Core)
With Pentium 4 the limit of the single-core CPU is reached which is about 4000 MHz. In order to make CPU faster, Intel released the Pentium D which is the short name of Pentium Dual-Core. Pentium D provides two cores that act like two CPU which will almost double the performance. Pentium D is released in 2005 and manufactured with 65 and 45 nm technologies. Pentium D clock speed is set to 2600 MHz in order to make less heat.
