What is Pentium referred to in computer performance specifications?

The Pentium referred to in the computer performance indicators is the Pentium processor.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Officially launched on the market in March: Pentium processors are fully compatible with previous Intel processors and have new content.

It is worth mentioning that there are two data pipelines in the Pentium processor, which can execute two instructions at the same time. Intel calls this ability to execute two instructions at the same time superscalar technology. This technology allows Pentium processors to work faster at a rate of two instructions per cycle. The Pentium processor can execute two program instructions per clock cycle, making its processing power much larger and faster than previous generations of Intel chips. At the same processing speed, the Pentium processor executes instructions approximately five times faster than the 80486.

Internally, it is very similar to the 80486. Of course, it is compatible with previous generations of processors. The main difference is that it can execute multiple instructions simultaneously. Pentium processors maintain 100% code compatibility with previous members of the 80x86 family, thus protecting users' software investments.

The Intel 486 microprocessor has one 8K cache, while the Pentium processor has two 8K caches, one for instructions and the other for data. These caches are used to temporarily store instructions and data fetched from slower main memory.

When the system uses data. It's likely to be used repeatedly, and retrieving data from the cache located within the processor chip is much faster than retrieving data from main memory.

The floating point unit of the Pentium processor is completely redesigned based on the floating point unit in the Intel 486 microprocessor. It consists of an 8-stage pipeline that can perform a floating point operation in one clock cycle.

Like the 486, the Pentium processor uses a 32-bit internal bus. However, its external data bus to memory is 64 bits wide, doubling the amount of data that can be transferred in a single bus cycle.

The 64-bit data bus allows the Pentium processor to write or read data to the memory at a rate of up to 528MB/second, which is significantly higher than the peak transfer rate of the 50MHz Intel 486 (160MB/second). More than 3 times.

The basis of these advantages lies in the structural characteristics of the Pentium processor, and the enhancement of the 486 structure has greatly improved the performance of the processor.

Compared with the 33MHz 486DX, the performance is improved by 3 to 5 times (the performance of computationally intensive programs is better); compared with the 66MHz Intel 486DX2 CPUSHEL, the performance is improved by 1.5 times.

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