alt Hacker NewsAh the pentium, aka 5-ium due to the penta- prefix. It is actually a nod from 4 to 5, but Intel wanted some cool name, and they decided penta + premium would sound cool, hence pentium.
But still, internally we call it i586, because that's the way it is. so is Pentium MMX which I reckon is called i686.
Replies
i686 was the microarchitecture introduced with the Pentium Pro and then Pentium II.
I always figured the "-ium" part was in imitation of element naming, to make it sound scientific
Self-correction: Pentium MMX is still i586, it is Pentium Pro that is i686, the confusion is real.
> but Intel wanted some cool name, and they decided penta + premium would sound cool, hence pentium
some say that they tried to add 486 with 100 and the result had some numbers after the comma, that's why they named it pentium (yes, i know about the FDIV bug)
Trademarks
> The name invoked the number five, but was completely trademarkable, unlike the number 586.