Pentium

processor 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 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)