[W/K] :: Pentium

  Pentium n. The name given to Intel's P5 chip, the successor to the
     80486. The name was chosen because of difficulties Intel had in
     trademarking a number. It suggests the number five (implying 586) while
     (according to Intel) conveying a meaning of strength "like titanium".
     Among hackers, the plural is frequently `pentia'. See also Pentagram
     Pro.
  
     Intel did not stick to this convention when naming its P6 processor
     the Pentium Pro; many believe this is due to difficulties in selling a
     chip with "hex" or "sex" in its name. Successor chips have been called
     `Pentium II', `Pentium III', and `Pentium IV'.
  
  

  Pentium
       
           Intel's superscalar successor to the 486.
          It has two 32-bit 486-type integer pipelines with dependency
          checking.  It can execute a maximum of two instructions per
          cycle.  It does pipelined floating-point and performs
          branch prediction.  It has 16 kilobytes of on-chip
          cache, a 64-bit memory interface, 8 32-bit general-purpose
          registers and 8 80-bit floating-point registers.  It is
          built from 3.1 million transistors on a 262.4 mm^2 die with
          ~2.3 million transistors in the core logic.  Its clock rate
          is 66MHz, heat dissipation is 16W, integer performance is 64.5
          SPECint92, floating-point performance 56.9 SPECfp92.
       
          It is called "Pentium" because it is the fifth in the 80x86
          line.  It would have been called the 80586 had a US court not
          ruled that you can't trademark a number.
       
          The successors are the Pentium Pro and Pentium II.
       
          A floating-point division bug
          (ftp://ftp.isi.edu/pub/carlton/pentium/FAQ) was discovered in
          October 1994.
       
          [Internal implementation, "Microprocessor Report" newsletter,
          1993-03-29, volume 7, number 4].
       
          [Pentium based computers, PC Magazine, 1994-01-25].
       
          (1997-11-21)