Pentium (brand)

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The Pentium registered trademark is included in many brand names of Intel's single- and multi-core x86-compatible microprocessors^[1]. It was first used in 1993 for the Pentium^[2] branded CPUs with Intel's fifth-generation "P5" microarchitecture (in Greek penta means 'five'). Subsequently (and inconsistently), it was used in later generation CPU's brands (listed below) distinguished by suffixes such as "Pro", "II", "III", "4", "D". In 1998, Intel separated low-priced processors under the Celeron^[3] brand. With the 2006 introduction of the "upper" Core 2 brand, there was no plan to use the Pentium trademark anymore, but apparently, "Intel developed the Pentium Dual-Core at the request of laptop manufacturers"^[4]. So, the brand containing Pentium trademark lost its "upper" position and became "mainstream" between the Core 2 and Celeron - in 2007^[5] and further on as the Pentium brand again^[6].

1 Brands with Pentium trademark
2 Origins of Pentium trademark
3 Current use of the trademark
4 References and footnotes

[edit] Brands with Pentium trademark

Brands of CPUs using the Pentium trademark:

Pentium
Pentium OverDrive
Pentium Pro
Pentium II, Pentium II Xeon
Pentium III, Pentium III Xeon
Pentium 4, Mobile Pentium 4, Mobile Pentium 4 M, Pentium 4 Extreme Edition
Pentium M
Pentium D, Pentium Extreme Edition
Pentium Dual Core (limited to 2007^[7])
Pentium (2008^[8])

Families of similar processors, but not using the Pentium trademark:

Celeron
Xeon

[edit] Origins of Pentium trademark

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, Intel was unable to persuade the court of law to allow them to trademark numbers (such as "i486"), in order to prevent their competitors from branding their processors with similar names, as AMD had done with their Am486. (The "586" number was later used by AMD, Cyrix and NexGen in their respective 5k86, 5x86 and Nx586 CPU brand names).

Intel enlisted the help of Lexicon Branding to create a brand that could be trademarked. The name 'Pentium', was derived from the Greek penta, meaning 'five', and the Latin ending -ium for neutral nouns. Because of this mix of language roots, the word could be considered a barbarism.^[9]^{[not in citation given]}. The Pentium brand was very successful, and was and still is maintained through several generations of processors, from the Pentium Pro to the Pentium Extreme Edition and further. Although not used for marketing purposes, Pentium series processors are still given numerical product codes, starting with 80500 for the original Pentium chip.

[edit] Current use of the trademark

The Core, introduced in early 2006, was the first Intel mainstream brand for mobile CPUs which did not contain the Pentium trademark. It replaced the Pentium M brand. With the 2006 introduction of the "upper" Core 2 brand, there was no plan to use the Pentium trademark anymore, but apparently, "Intel developed the Pentium Dual-Core at the request of laptop manufacturers"^[10]. In 2007, the Pentium Dual-Core brand (of dual-core budget processors) revived the "Pentium" trademark^[11] . So, the brand containing Pentium trademark lost its "upper" position and became "mainstream" between the Core 2 and Celeron. The Pentium Dual-Core brand referred to laptop CPUs previously branded as the Core, and newer desktop ones with 1 MB of cache, which 2 MB-cache "cousins" were branded as the Core 2. In 2008, the Pentium brand is to replace the Pentium Dual-Core^[12].