Friday the 22nd of March has been the 20th anniversary of the Intel Pentium processor, a chip that was first introduced on March 22, 1993. The first product in the line, the Pentium P5 (the 5 standing for 5th generation x86 microarchitecture) was available in 60 MHz and 66 MHz versions, included 3.1 million transistors, had a TDP of up to 16 W, and used an 800nm manufacturing process.
By comparison, today"s Intel Ivy Bridge processor - which is still technically a Pentium chip, despite being primarily branded as "Ivy Bridge" or "3rd-generation Core iX" - includes 1.4 billion transistors, includes clock speeds of up to 3.90 GHz, has a max TDP of 77 W and uses a 22nm process; how times have changed!
Be sure to check out one of the original Pentium adverts from 1994 above (look at how smooth those planet animations are!) and maybe crack open a beer this weekend to say thanks to one of the most prolific CPU lines of all time.
Via: Engadget