Pentium - History

History

The original Pentium branded CPUs were expected to be named 586 or i586, to follow the naming convention of previous generations (286, i386, i486). However, as the company wanted to prevent their competitors from branding their processors with similar names, as AMD had done with their Am486, Intel attempted to file a trademark on the name in the United States, only to be denied because a series of numbers was not considered distinct.

Following Intel's previous series of 8086, 80186, 80286, 80386, and 80486 microprocessors, the company's first P5-based microprocessor was released as the original Intel Pentium on March 22, 1993. Marketing firm Lexicon Branding was hired to coin a name for the new processor. The suffix -ium was chosen as it could connote a fundamental ingredient of a computer, like a chemical element, while the prefix pent- could refer to the fifth generation of x86.

Due to its success, the Pentium brand would continue through several generations of high-end processors beyond the original. In 2006, the Pentium brand briefly disappeared from Intel's roadmaps, only to re-emerge in 2007.

In 1998, Intel introduced the Celeron brand for low-priced microprocessors. With the 2006 introduction of the Intel Core brand as the company's new flagship line of processors, the Pentium series was to be discontinued. However, due to a demand for mid-range dual-core processors, the Pentium brand was re-purposed to be Intel's mid-range processor series, in between the Celeron and Core series, continuing with the Pentium Dual-Core line.

In 2009, the "Dual-Core" suffix was dropped, and new x86 microprocessors started carrying the plain Pentium name again.