Origin of the name "Pentium"

[Shakaza]

I always wondered where Intel got the name Pentium for their CPUs, and I just figured it out! I was on the page of the user @Kirky2k15, whose listed occupation is "Element 115 miner," which happens to be the element with the temporary name Ununpentium, the fifth one(originally; some are named now) with that type of name, and sure enough, the first Pentium was Intel's fifth generation of x86 processors. I don't know why I never thought of it before; I mean, it's kinda obvious, Pentium, penta-, 5. Duh.

 

Edit: Mods, @Godlygamer23 or someone else, is this the correct subforum for something like this? It has some tie-ins to technology since this revolves around CPU naming schemes, but it doesn't itself relate directly to it. Thank you!

[Venomz1337]

k

[Aytex]

Pentium sounds like lithium which is found on the periodic table, the periodic table has square which has 4 sides, sides, what else has sides, Egypt, Egypt is in Africa, what origionanted from Africa, ebola, what sounds like ebola, the river apilachicola river, river sounds like beiber, beiber is from Canada, can a da is 3 words

 

 

 

 

intel is loominarty comfirnemd /_\

[manikyath]

they called them pentium because they could trademark it, and you cant trademark a number. (586)

[theereal]

Yeah, cause everybody thinks of that, so obvious

[Nacho Marco Segui]

HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

[CalebTheEternal]

Pentium sounds like lithium which is found on the periodic table, the periodic table has square which has 4 sides, sides, what else has sides, Egypt, Egypt is in Africa, what origionanted from Africa, ebola, what sounds like ebola, the river apilachicola river, river sounds like beiber, beiber is from Canada, can a da is 3 words

 

 

 

 

intel is loominarty comfirnemd /_\

How long did it take you to come up with that?

[Aytex]

How long did it take you to come up with that?

2-3 minutes

[KemoKa]

2-3 minutes

Guy, I think you may be approaching @Trik'stari in your conspiracy skillz.

[ThinkWithPortals]

The name Pentium is originally derived from the Greek word pente (πέντε), meaning "five" (as the original Pentium processors used Intel's fifth-generation microarchitecture, the P5), and the Latin ending -ium.

[KemoKa]

the Pentium would have been the i586, but they went with Pentium because at the time it sounded cooler (I don't think it did.) They weren't that bad until the Pentium 4 came along and ruined the name for them for all eternity. The P4 was so bad that they went back to the Pentium III for the Core architecture. Yes... The first Core Duos were basically souped-up, dual-core Pentium IIIs. So now the Pentium chips have been moved to the low-end consumer side.

[manikyath]

the Pentium would have been the i586, but they went with Pentium because at the time it sounded cooler (I don't think it did.) They weren't that bad until the Pentium 4 came along and ruined the name for them for all eternity. The P4 was so bad that they went back to the Pentium III for the Core architecture. Yes... The first Core Duos were basically souped-up, dual-core Pentium IIIs. So now the Pentium chips have been moved to the low-end consumer side.

P4 was actually pretty fast.. as long as you dont touch floating point.

 

i have benchmarked two P4 machines: one 32bit and one 64bit.

 

the 64bit is pretty fast inteeer wise, and floating point is powerpc 200MHz slow.

the 32bit is still somewhat decent integer wise, and.. crashes when i try to benchmark floating point...

[Kirky2k15]

I always wondered where Intel got the name Pentium for their CPUs, and I just figured it out! I was on the page of the user @Kirky2k15, whose listed occupation is "Element 115 miner," which happens to be the element with the temporary name Ununpentium, the fifth one(originally; some are named now) with that type of name, and sure enough, the first Pentium was Intel's fifth generation of x86 processors. I don't know why I never thought of it before; I mean, it's kinda obvious, Pentium, penta-, 5. Duh.

Why were you on my page man, I'm paranoid BTW

[Kirky2k15]

HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

2nd time I've seen this response to something today? Are people actively turning into snakes?

[KemoKa]

P4 was actually pretty fast.. as long as you dont touch floating point.

 

i have benchmarked two P4 machines: one 32bit and one 64bit.

 

the 64bit is pretty fast inteeer wise, and floating point is powerpc 200MHz slow.

the 32bit is still somewhat decent integer wise, and.. crashes when i try to benchmark floating point...

But, back then for the price, it was an absolute and complete turd. People who had Athlon X2s at the time get mad kudos, because back then, it was essentially the godsend masterrace processor. That was the time in history when AMD legitimately had the faster processor, and it should have made them a huge pile of money to build an empire on, but Intel ended up shafting their benchmarking utilities to make the P4 look faster. That's why everyone who had a Netburst P4 from back then got $15 last year.

 

Wendell talked about this.

[manikyath]

But, back then for the price, it was an absolute and complete turd. People who had Athlon X2s at the time get mad kudos, because back then, it was essentially the godsend masterrace processor. That was the time in history when AMD legitimately had the faster processor, and it should have made them a huge pile of money to build an empire on, but Intel ended up shafting their benchmarking utilities to make the P4 look faster. That's why everyone who had a Netburst P4 from back then got $15 last year.

 

Wendell talked about this.

i've compared both of them to my athlon 64.

 

the 64bit's integer performance is mindblowingly faster, the 32bit can *keep up*

the athlon 64's floating point performance... is about 4-5 times that of the 64bit P4

 

and well.. we kinda use FLOPs for most things today.

[KemoKa]

i've compared both of them to my athlon 64.

 

the 64bit's integer performance is mindblowingly faster, the 32bit can *keep up*

the athlon 64's floating point performance... is about 4-5 times that of the 64bit P4

 

and well.. we kinda use FLOPs for most things today.

This is the pitfall that AMD is ironically in today with Bulldozer. Integer performance is a moot point anywhere except servers.

[Shakaza]

Why were you on my page man, I'm paranoid BTW

I saw you post something on the forum, I saw your avatar, it looked cool, I went to your page, and I went off on a tangent. It happens a lot.

[Shakaza]

The name Pentium is originally derived from the Greek word pente (πέντε), meaning "five" (as the original Pentium processors used Intel's fifth-generation microarchitecture, the P5), and the Latin ending -ium.

Yeah, that makes sense, but what I was noting was a similarity between an element on the periodic table and the name of a CPU. The fact that they are similar made me realize where Intel got the name Pentium in the first place, which is something I've wondered for a long time, and that realization is what I wanted to share on this forum!