CPUs--Central Processing Unit--A Brief History

  CPUs have gone through many changes through the few years since Intel came out with the first one. IBM chose Intel’s 8088 processor for the brains of the first PC. This choice by IBM is what made Intel the perceived leader of the CPU market. Intel remains the perceived leader of microprocessor development. While newer contenders have developed their own technologies for their own processors, Intel continues to remain more than a viable source of new technology in this market, with the ever-growing AMD nipping at their heels.
 

CPUs Today

AMD

ATHLON - The AMD Athlon processor is the world's most powerful x86 processor, significantly outperforming Intel's Pentium III processor and delivering the highest integer, floating point and 3D multimedia performance for applications running on x86 system platforms . The AMD Athlon provides industry-leading processing power for cutting-edge software applications, including digital content creation, digital photo editing, digital video, image compression, video encoding for streaming over the Internet, soft DVD, commercial 3D modeling, workstation-class computer-aided design (CAD), commercial desktop publishing, and speech recognition. It also offers the scalability and “peace-of-mind” reliability that IT managers and business users require for networked enterprise computing.

K6 - The K6 series is AMD's answer to the Pentium II and Pentium III processors manufactured by Intel. Available at speeds of 200MHz to 300MHz, K6 processors come equipped with MMX technology, which AMD licensed from Intel. Like many fifth and sixth generation processors, the K6 uses superscalar architechture, which lets the processor execute more than one instruction simultaneously during each clock cycle.

K6-2 with 3DNow! - Avalaible in speeds of 300MHz, 333MHz and 350MHz, AMD's K6-2 processor incorporate several advances, such as MMX support, support for secondary-cache memory, Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) and the new 3DNow! technology. 3DNow! technology imporves a processor's ability to perform floating-point mathematics calculations, which improves its ability to communicate with today's three-dimensional (3-D) accelerators and advanced sound devices.

K6-III - The Super7 platform initiative provides a tremendous improvement on the proven, cost-effective Socket 7 infrastructure. Developed by AMD and key industry partners, the Super7 platform supercharges Socket 7 by adding support for 100-MHz and 95-MHz bus interfaces and the Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) specification and by delivering other leading-edge features, including 100-MHz SDRAM, USB, Ultra DMA, ACPI, and PC 98. The latest enhancements to the AMD-K6 processor family include support for a full-speed backside L2 cache and an optional frontside L3 cache. Together, these enhancements give the Super7 platform strong staying power for the remainder of the 20th century. The Super7 platform maintains the vitality of Socket 7 for the life of sixth-generation processors, delivering leading-edge performance and features necessary for sixth-generation CPUs like the AMD-K6-2 and AMD-K6-III processors with 3DNow! technology.   back to the top


Cyrix

MediaGX - MediaGX processors were among the first processors in sub-$1000 PC's. They are available in 166MHz and 180MHz speeds. The chip handles memory control for graphics and sound functions, eliminating the need for expensive multimedia adapters.

6x86 and 6x86MX - Cyrix's 6x86 and 6x86MX compete with Intel's Pentium chips. Available in speeds from 120MHz to 300MHz, 6x86 chips have many of the same features of the Pentium processors and are competitively priced. The 6x86MX processors come with MMX technology, have a generous 64 kilobytes of primary cache, and cost considerably less than Intel chips at comparable speeds.

M II - The M II (M2) chips compares favorably with the Pentium II chips by Intel in its features. Boasting the same 64KB primary cache found in the 6x86MX, the M2 is available in speeds of 300MHz and 333MHz. The M II uses superscalar architecture and has an FPU capable of 80-bit processing.


Intel

Itanium - Intel unveiled new details about its upcoming line of IA-64 processors and announced the name of the first IA-64 processor, to be called the Intel Itanium processor. Previously known by the code name Merced, the Itanium processor employs a 64-bit architecture and enhanced instruction handling to greatly increase the performance of demanding e-Business, visualization, computation and multimedia operations. Today, five different 64-bit operating systems have booted on Intel Itanium processors, underscoring the broad vendor support behind the IA-64 processor family. Servers and workstations based on the Itanium processor are scheduled for production in 2000.

Pentium III - This processor sets a new baseline for high-performance business desktop computing, and is also available for entry-level workstations and servers. And now, the new mobile Pentium III processor enables greater productivity on the go, at speeds of up to 500MHz.

Pentium III Xeon - With the advent of the powerful Pentium III Xeon processor, Intel-based servers challenge RISC-based servers in price/performance and raw performance. This premium server engine from Intel will deliver speeds of up to 550MHz (up to 733MHz in 2-way platforms), providing more throughput for Internet applications and the ability to use multiprocessing and clustering to build solutions for even the most demanding e-Business applications. Pentium III Xeon processor-based servers have the enhanced scalability, availability, reliability, and manageability you need for business in the Internet age.    back to the top

Pentium - Intel introduced the 80586 Pentium CPU in 1993. These Pentium chips contained more than 3 million transistors and could execute 112 million instructions per second. Pentium processors had clock speeds (how fast the system processes data) from 60 Megahertz to 200 Megahertz. The pins on the bottom of Pentium chips attach to motherboards via a Socket 7 (32 pin) connector. These systems used the older non-ATX case as well as the older Socket 7 for the chip. These units are rarely seen for sale in regular retail markets and can be found as used units.

Pentium Pro - In 1995, Intel released it 80686 processor, the Pentium Pro. The Pentium Pro chip which contains 5.5 million transistors and their own memory cache chip to increase performance. (Cache is high-speed memory used to hold frequently accessed data). This chip was introduced primarily for file servers. These chips are now somewhat outdated and are being replaced by the newer Pentium III Xeon chip.

Pentium MMX - Intel introduced MMX technology in early 1997 to facilitate better processing of multimedia applications. Pentium MMX CPU chips execute 57 more mathematical instructions dealing with floating-point notation (a method for storing numeric calculations where the decimal point is not fixed) operations than non-MMX Pentiums. This extra math processing increases overall performance as much as 20% and would otherwise require additional hardware. These chips are now considered older technology. MMX technology can be utilised better now using the newer video MMX/3D boards that are offered at very reasonable costs. back to the top

Celeron - The Celeron processor is for low-cost desktop PC's. The Celeron uses the same P6 (80686) architecture as the Pentium II, but with one major difference. Pentium II chips have speed enhancing 512 kilobyte secondary caches, located within the Pentium II cartridge. The design improves performance, but increases cost. Cost-conscious Celeron processors do not have a secondary cache. The Celeron CPU is the most popular chip used in home systems. The low cost coupled with Intel reliability make this a good entry level central processing unit.

Newer Celeron chips have about half the secondary cache memory as Pentium II chips, but have integrated the cache onto the surface of the processor to trim costs.
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