On July 27th, 2006, Intel announced that its desktop microprocessor products have entered a brand-new "Core" era worldwide. The emergence of Core 2 processor has ignited the enthusiasm of countless DIY computer enthusiasts. When processor fans all over the world are focusing on Core 2, maybe we should also pay attention to it. On the same day, Intel officially announced that the Pentium era that dominated the desktop processor field 13 years was over. No matter old or new computer users, as long as they know something about PC, I believe they will not be unfamiliar with the keyword Pentium. There is no doubt that Pentium is a well-known brand in the field of microprocessor. For many years, Pentium has been synonymous with processors and even computers. Pentium, which has become history, is still the most important product in the history of Intel microprocessor products and a very proud capital. The history of Pentium's full range of processors can almost be regarded as a modern PC history. Especially for domestic users, most PC users have been exposed to computers since the Pentium era. However, since 2006, Pentium products will gradually fade out of people's sight, and the generation of heroes has finally ended. China has a famous saying: There is no banquet that must come to an end, and Pentium cannot be an eternal myth after all. In the past ten years, Pentium products have undergone several generations of changes. Let us once again enter the Pentium era that is about to withdraw from the historical stage. First, the birth of Pentium: the impact on the global IT industry began 13 years ago. In fact, Pentium was not introduced as the main product that Intel has been brewing for a long time. In fact, in the 1970s and 1980s, the desktop microprocessors launched by Intel were all named after 8086, 286, 386 and 486. At that time, the global PC was not popular, and the awareness of brand technology patents was not so strong today, so its competitor AMD also named its products in this way.

The first generation Pentium microprocessor, with a frequency of 60MHz, has only 365,438+million transistors. After entering the 1990s, the PC in developed countries developed rapidly. Intel undoubtedly saw the infinite business opportunities contained in it, so Intel decided to part ways with AMD on its 80586 product and registered the Pentium trademark for 80586. Since then, Pentium, as a brand, has spread all over the world. Pentium (80586), 1993, the first generation product released on March 22nd, was a Pentium era that Intel could not predict and influence the global IT community.

Second, with the east wind of MMX, the layout of Pentium has been further expanded. The launch of the first generation of Pentium has achieved unprecedented success, and Intel has strengthened its determination to embark on the road of independent processors. In fact, it is not only the desktop field, but also the server and workstation field. Pentium's brand power has penetrated into various fields, and AMD and Cyrix have since embarked on the bitter road of followers. In fact, the development of Pentium is not smooth sailing. In order to get rid of the entanglement between AMD and Cyrix completely, Intel not only got rid of product naming, but also rose to the interface level. Pentium Pro processor with P6 bus protocol and Socket8 interface was born in 1995. From a technical point of view, Pentium Pro was definitely a horrible product at that time, with advanced functions such as 80-bit floating-point unit and branch prediction, and realized 32-bit memory addressing. In addition, Pentimu Pro also encapsulates a 256KB secondary cache chip in the chip, and the two chips are interconnected by a high-bandwidth internal communication bus, and the connecting line between the processor and the cache is also placed in this package, so that the cache can run at a higher frequency more easily. However, from the market point of view, Pentium Pro is a big failure. At that time, 32-bit applications were not the mainstream, and even in 16-bit applications, Pentium Pro could not show obvious performance advantages. Pentium Pro, which is too advanced, has also paid a heavy price because of its high cost, and the delay in new product development has brought AMD and Cyrix an extremely important breathing space. Meanwhile, Cyrix 5X86 is catching up. But objectively speaking, Cyrix has gone from bad to worse, and the overall performance of contemporary Cyrix 5X86 is far from that of Pentium and AMD K5. The mistakes of Pentium Pro did not hinder the momentum of Pentium. What really makes Pentium "carry forward" in front of the world should be Pentium MMX processor. Nowadays, countless experts started from MMX era, which is also a crucial year for the large-scale popularization of Intel processors in China. 1in the middle of 1996, due to the high price of Pentimu Pro, Intel could not occupy any advantage in the mainstream market, so it launched Pentium MMX to occupy the mainstream market. MMX is a new technology adopted by Intel in 1996, which is used to enhance the application of Pentium CPU in audio, video, graphics and communication, and 57 MMX instructions are added to CPU. In addition to adding MMX instructions to the instruction set, the L 1 cache in the CPU chip is increased from the original 16KB to 32KB( 16K means lifetime+16K data).

At that time, PC was in the stage of rapid popularization, and the birth of the concept of home computer gave birth to multimedia applications. The MMX instruction set clearly seized this opportunity. In fact, the embedded instruction set in CPU is a shortcut to development, and it has been proved that its effect is quite remarkable. After the application software is specially optimized for MMX, the execution efficiency is significantly improved. The most typical example is the soft decompression of VCD at that time: at the same frequency, the performance of Pentium 166 MX with MMX instruction set is about 50% higher than that of Pentium166, so the soft decompression of VCD can also reach a smooth speed. On the other hand, the cache architecture of Pentium MMX has also been greatly improved. At this time, the overall performance is significantly ahead of the first generation Pentium, and the maturity of the 0.35 micron process has initially solved the cost problem, thus truly welcoming the peak of popularization.

Third, Pentium II laid a solid foundation for the Pentium era. When the technology and market are mature, Pentium brand products naturally develop to the second generation stage. 1997, in order to further attack competitors, Intel boldly used more innovative designs on Pentium II, which can be said to be a model of the perfect combination of Pentimu Pro and MMX technology. On Pentium II, Intel changed the clumsy and power-consuming bipolar hardware of BiCMOS manufacturing process in the past, and compressed 7.5 million transistors into a 203mm2 die. So in terms of volume, Pentium II is not much bigger than Pentium Pro, but it has 2 million more transistors than Pentium Pro. Pentium II not only provides excellent 32-bit performance, but also has excellent 16-bit performance, bringing the whole CPU industry into the 32-bit era. The first generation Pentium II runs on 66MHz bus, and the system bus of the second generation product is 100MHz. Pentium II uses half-speed 5 12K secondary cache, and l 1 cache is 32K, and adopts the latest Solt 1 patent interface standard for the first time, which blocks competitors AMD and Cyrix from patents. However, it has to be pointed out that Pentium II has further exposed the already prominent cost contradiction. Because of the Slot 1 interface, cost control has almost become an empty talk. During this critical period, both AMD and Cyrix recognized Intel's weaknesses and focused on low prices. K6 processor will increase the frequency to 300MHz, at this time, the overall performance is not inferior to the expensive Pentium II 233/266MHz, and the price of both CPU and motherboard is significantly lower. From the technical and market point of view, Pentium II is undoubtedly successful, but it overdraws Intel's future market space. Intel, which is not stubborn, finally faced up to the market demand and introduced Celeron products that people are no longer familiar with, but the integer performance of Celeron processors with the first generation of second-level cache is not satisfactory. Four. PentiumIII shapes the glory of Pentium era. Since the Pentium II era, Intel has embarked on the market strategy of Pentium and Celeron series processors focusing on the middle and low end. The image of Pentium has been upgraded again in theory because it is a symbol of high-end PC. But in the China market, the low-end market is the main battlefield of the consumer army. After experiencing the initial pain of the first generation, Celeron was able to turn the tide in the second generation. At that time, Celeron A, 128KB secondary cache shattered AMD's dream of low-end hegemony, and its good overclocking performance even threatened the status of Pentium II. The combination of Pentium and Celeron made Intel taste the sweetness. Two years later, 1999, Intel released the third generation Pentium processor again, which is the classic PentiumIII. The early PentiumIII and PentiumII adopted similar closed scheme, and the high-cost scheme was criticized in technology and market. Then Intel returned to the Socket interface platform again, and together with Tualatin Celeron, it created the PentiumIII dynasty which is still talked about by many DIY players.

Tualatin PentiumIII with 5 12KB L2 cache However, it is worth noting that the glory of Pentium III is not based on AMD's weakness. On the contrary, AMD has made great progress at this stage. Thunderbird series laid a solid foundation at that time, which was of great help to reverse AMD's performance image. Even in a frequency war to seize the main frequency standard GHz, AMD took the lead in making Thunderbird processor realize the landmark 1GHz. However, Intel's market manipulation ability is too strong, and platform solutions also allow Intel to occupy upstream resources. Objectively speaking, PentiumIII should be able to reach a more brilliant level. However, due to the problem of product line replacement, PentiumIII finally chose to make way for Pentium4 and withdrew from the historical stage "in advance". Its life span can be said to be the shortest in the Pentium era, leaving a "grievance" in 2000, when frequent wars dominated.

5. Pentium 4/ Pentium D became the last swan song of Pentium era. It can be said that Pentium 4 is the most controversial product in Pentium series, but it has the longest history in Pentium era. For more than six years, Pentium 4 has been the main force of Intel's main attack on the middle and high end. Objectively speaking, Pentium 4 has made great contributions to Intel in the past, and it is also the most successful product in the advertising war. In China, a large number of friends who entered the DIY field started from the Pentium 4 era. Although Celeron products may be the final choice, the popularity of Pentium 4 is definitely better than that of previous Pentium products. Especially in China, desktop manufacturers have played a very important role in fueling Pentium 4, making Pentium 4 deeply rooted in people's hearts. Pentium 4 can be said to be a "golden signboard" of Intel in recent years, but its early development was not smooth sailing, and the first generation of Willamette Core was criticized. For the brand-new NetBurst structure, playing a powerful performance requires a higher main frequency and a powerful cache structure, which Willamette core does not have. The 256KB L2 cache is obviously insufficient, and the overall performance is greatly affected at this time. But the most embarrassing thing for Intel is that the Pentium 4 1.5G at Willamette's core is not even as good as the Pentium 3 at tualatin's core, and even the overclocked Celeron in tualatin can be replaced in some tests.

Willamette's core Pentium 4 can still save the face of the giant in the subsequent frequency war. The comprehensive performance of high-frequency products based on NetBurst architecture is still true. Coupled with Intel's strong control ability of upstream manufacturers, AMD can't compete with Intel even if it is equally excellent in products or even if some products in the same price segment have slightly greater advantages. Before 2003, every frequency increase of Pentium 4 dealt a heavy blow to competitors. But at that time, AMD's K7 architecture was also developing, Barton's core put Intel in a passive position, and Intel's leading edge had been shaken. We can even draw a clear conclusion: Intel's NetBurst architecture has played an indisputable advantage in the frequency war, but only from the comprehensive performance of the architecture itself, especially in the face of AMD's K7 with excellent performance, NetBurst architecture does not have much capital to be proud of. If it weren't for Intel's powerful market control ability, the pattern of CPU market today might be another scene. Intel is naturally aware of this problem, but the NetBurst architecture has already started, which cannot be stopped. To this end, Intel has to continue to increase the main frequency and increase the second-level cache capacity. However, to Intel's great embarrassment, the processor manufacturing process is now facing bottlenecks. Even with 65nm technology, it is extremely difficult to achieve high clock frequency in NetBurst architecture in the future, which means that NetBurst architecture will not be able to continue to compete with competitors with its clock frequency advantage in the future. In addition, the huge cache capacity is also a burden, which not only increases the cost, but also makes the calorific value soar. If it weren't for Intel's good public relations and market reputation, Intel processors would have been embarrassed, because today's high-frequency Pentium is synonymous with high heat value and high power consumption, and even Celeron D is hot.

When Northwood's Pentium 4 finally launched Prescott's Pentium 4 with NetBurst architecture, people have clearly felt that this product is a spent force. After using this core in epoch-making dual-core processor products, its power consumption and heat generation made NetBurst's reputation worse. AMD's K8 series has gradually won more and more users with its excellent game performance and cost performance, which indicates that Intel must have an architectural baptism.

Sixth, turn the tide: Core ends Pentium In the past six years, Intel's most successful product is actually not Pentium 4, but Pentium M, which has an absolute advantage in the mobile field. The first generation Pentium M processor at the core of Banias was the main force of Intel in the mobile market from 2003 to 2004. In the past, mobile processors were always inferior to desktop processors in performance, but this time things will be different. Banias with 1MB L2 cache can achieve Pentium 4-M performance of 140% or higher at the same frequency. After adopting 0. 13 micron process, Banias can integrate 77 million transistors, and the power consumption is particularly controlled to be quite low. Banias' performance is very surprising, and a lot of new technologies have been adopted. Among them, ACG(Active Clock gate) can automatically adjust the working frequency of CPU, stop providing clock signals to the unused parts of the processor to reduce power consumption, and turn off some units or reduce the overall clock frequency when the execution unit task is not heavy, which can save a lot of power consumption. Especially in 2004, Intel introduced the Dothan core Pentium M mobile processor with 90 nm manufacturing technology. Dothan's biggest feature is that it adopts enhanced CG(Aggressive Clock gate) technology, which can automatically adjust the working frequency of CPU more intelligently and make the working time of notebook battery reach more than 5 hours. In terms of performance, Dothan not only upgraded the motherboard, but also built-in 2MB large-capacity secondary cache, with perfect overall performance. Getting high performance with low power consumption is the essential advantage of Pentium M. In fact, the guiding ideology of Core comes from Pentium M, which introduces mobile products with excellent architecture into the desktop field, and at the same time turns passive into active, and improves the power/performance ratio in a high profile. Intel's move is very correct.