Pentium

Lore & Background

During development, Intel generally identifies processors with codenames such as Prescott, Willamette, Coppermine, Katmai, Klamath, or Deschutes. The original Pentium-branded CPUs were expected to be named 586 or i586, but Intel filed a trademark application on the name in the United States and was denied because a series of numbers was considered to lack trademark distinctiveness. Instead, they named their processors 'Pentium', a name coined by marketing firm Lexicon Branding; the suffix -ium was chosen to connote a fundamental ingredient of a computer, while the prefix pent- referred to the fifth generation of x86.

Following Intel's prior series of 8086, 80186, 80286, 80386, and 80486 microprocessors, the first P5-based processor was released as the original Intel Pentium on March 22, 1993. Due to its success, the Pentium brand continued through several generations of high-end processors. In 2006, the name briefly disappeared from Intel's technology roadmaps, only to re-emerge in 2007. With the 2006 introduction of the Intel Core brand as the company's new flagship line, the Pentium series was to be discontinued, but due to demand for mid-range dual-core processors, the Pentium brand was repurposed as Intel's mid-range processor series, between Celeron and Core, continuing with the Pentium Dual-Core line.

In 2014, Intel released the Pentium 20th Anniversary Edition to mark the 20th anniversary of the Pentium brand; these processors are unlocked and highly overclockable. In 2017, Intel split the Pentium branding into two line-ups: Pentium Silver targeting low-power devices and sharing architecture with Atom and Celeron, and Pentium Gold targeting entry-level desktops using existing architectures such as Kaby Lake and Coffee Lake. In September 2022, Intel announced that the Pentium and Celeron brands were to be replaced with the new 'Intel Processor' branding for low-end processors starting on January 1, 2023.

Reader's Guide

The Pentium brand spanned three decades and multiple microarchitectures, from the original P5 superscalar design through P6, NetBurst, Pentium M, and Core-based designs. Later Pentiums had little more than their name in common with earlier Pentiums, being based on both Atom and Core architectures. In the case of Atom architectures, Pentiums were the highest performance implementations. Pentium processors with Core architectures prior to 2017 were distinguished from faster i-series processors by lower clock rates and disabling features such as hyper-threading, virtualization, and sometimes L3 cache. The brand's longevity reflects Intel's strategy of repurposing the Pentium name for different market segments: initially a flagship, then a mid-range line, and finally a budget brand split into Silver and Gold tiers. The Pentium brand was ultimately discontinued in 2023, replaced by the 'Intel Processor' branding for low-end processors, marking the end of a name that had been a cornerstone of the PC industry for nearly 30 years.

Did You Know?

• The original Pentium was expected to be named 586 or i586, but Intel could not trademark a number series.
• The name 'Pentium' was coined by marketing firm Lexicon Branding, using 'pent-' for fifth generation and '-ium' to suggest a fundamental computer ingredient.
• In 2014, Intel released a Pentium 20th Anniversary Edition that was unlocked and highly overclockable.
• In 2017, the Pentium brand was split into Pentium Silver (low-power) and Pentium Gold (entry-level desktop).