What is a Pentium?

The Pentium family of processors is the current generation of CPU's for personal computers from Intel.

Pentium processors trace their heritage all the way back to the original Intel 8088 CPU used in the original IBM-PC in 1981.

Intel renamed the 80586 processor Pentium because of the difficulties of trademarking numbers. This was a move by Intel to create confusion in the marketplace which would reduce commodotization in the CPU market and allow them to retain higher profit margins in the face of low-cost competitors like AMD.

Intel retained the Pentium name for suceeding generations of processors. These CPU's bear little internal resemblance to the original Pentium design, but do maintain code compatibility back to the 8088 CPU.

CPU	Transistors	Max Clock Speed	L1 Cache	L2 Cache
Pentium III Xeon	28M	1000hz	32KB	64KB
Mobile Celeron	28M	1800hz	32KB	256KB
Pentium III-M	44M	1333hz	32KB	512KB
Pentium III	44M	1400hz	32KB	512KB
Celeron	44M	1800hz	8KB Data + 12KB ETC	128KB
Pentium 4-M	55M	2200hz	8KB Data + 12KB ETC	512KB
Pentium 4	55M	3066hz	8KB Data + 12KB ETC	512KB
Xeon	55M	2800hz	8KB Data + 12KB ETC	512KB
Pentium-M	77M	1700hz	8KB Data + 12KB ETC	1MB
Xeon MP	***	1600hz	20KB	256KB