The History…of this article.
Last night, as usual, I found myself talking to the most important person in my life. As it happened, and I personally don’t know/remember how it happened, we started talking about CPUs. I think it started as talking about big business, and then I mentioned Intel, and their current strategy of telling any motherboard manufacturers that if they make and sell any Athlon motherboards, they would experience a shortage of chipsets. We got started talking about the history of CPUs, and why things are happening like they are now. Then, like she usually does, she laid there in silence at my knowledge, and just simply remarked, “You should write a book around everything you know.” Well, that was a great opportunity for me to gain some points and say something sweet to her, which I did. Then, I got the idea to write an article for this site. And here it comes.
One Company, one chip.
This would be a perfect place to start. Intel introduces a new chip. It blows away its chip prior to it, the 486 class. It was a 64-bit chip, and had an advance floating point unit (for the time). It was the Intel Pentium. With that name, the back stabbing and biting started. Intel named the chip the Pentium so that it could trademark that name, so other companies (like AMD and Cyrix) could not use the name Intel came up with, like they have done in the past with the 386 and 486 processors. So, AMD decides it can play that game, and buys NexGen, and uses it’s developers to make it’s next chip, the K5. Cyrix then, decided to keep the x86 naming system, and made the 5×86, which was basically a 32-bit Pentium that fit in a 486 socket, and the 6×86, which was a low cost, low performance Pentium Alternative. So, now, each company has it’s own flagship chip, Intel with the Pentium, AMD with the K5, and Cyrix with the 6×86.
Intel splits the market.
Around the time of the Pentium running at 133Mhz, Intel decided to introduce a whole new processor aimed at high performance workstations and servers. It was basically a Pentium chip, with a more advanced floating point, some onboard L2 Cache, and something called Dynamic Execution. Because AMD or Cyrix couldn’t produce such a chip, Intel Basically took over the server and high end workstation market. Next, Intel decided to make some additions to its Pentium Chips. They were called MMX instructions, and the chip that used them: the Pentium MMX. It was basically a Pentium Chip, but with double the L1 Cache and the MMX instructions. It also ran on a split voltage plane, 3.3V I/O, and 2.8V core. AMD then added MMX to the K5, and called it the K6. Cyrix did the same thing, and made the 6x86MX. By this time, it became obvious there were 3 markets of CPUs. They were the high end, the mid range, and the low end. AMD and Cyrix were competing in the low-end, while Intel pretty much had the mid-range and high end tied up with the Pentium MMX and the Pentium Pro.
Intel flexes some major muscle!
Of course, processors advance. And how Intel advanced it’s processors was very odd, but it worked. It took a Pentium Pro, stuck it on a circuit board, and added the MMX instructions from the Pentium MMX. It then took the Pro’s L2 Cache, doubled it from 256K to 512K, and put it on that circuit board, and ran it at half the speed of the CPU core. The circuit board plugged into the motherboard like a PCI or ISA card would. The name? The Intel Pentium II. Intel also felt compelled to keep the high-end market to itself, so it made a special Pentium II that had the L2 cache running at full speed. Name? It was the Pentium II Xeon. So, AMD decides to make a chip that would keep up with the times, the K6-2. It was basically a K6, but with its own 3D instructions, called 3D-NOW! Those instructions were great for games, if your games supported them. Still, AMD and Cyrix had the low-end market, while Intel had mainstream and high-end markets in their hand.
The story of the 100Mhz bus, and the Celeron.
Intel realized that with its muscle, it could also take over the low-end market. So, with the introduction of the 100Mhz bus Pentium II 350Mhz, and the BX chipset, Intel announced the Celeron. It was basically a Pentium II without ANY L2 cache. This resulted in Pentium MMX-like performance, which wasn’t good at the time. So, Intel decided to add some L2 cache on the core of the CPU, but only 128KB of it. The good side of this is that it ran AT the full clock speed of the CPU! It was introduced in 300 and 333MHz versions, both which proved to run at ungodly speeds higher than what they were rated at. So, people bought them over the Pentium II, and Intel took over all 3 markets of CPUs, high end, low end, and mid-range.
Pentium III, and the not so distant past.
Intel saw the success that 3D-NOW! was having, so it decided to make its own 3D instructions, SSE. Throw it in the Pentium II, and you get the Pentium III. The Celeron would stay the same, which is no big deal, because it still runs faster than it’s rated at. No big deal. With Intel introducing the Celeron, it pushed Cyrix out of the low-end market. Cyrix is dead. Information leaks out of an AMD processor that will totally kill the Pentium III. Its name, obviously, is the K7. I’m skipping the K6-III, because it’s basically a K6-2
Athlon, and the price wars
To make a looonnnggg story short, AMD changes the name from K7 to Athlon, Intel then cuts prices. Athlon runs at 600Mhz. Pentium III runs at 550Mhz. Intel announces 600Mhz. AMD puts one over Intel and announces 650Mhz Athlon. Intel cuts prices again. AMD doesn’t do anything. Intel says to motherboard makers “Make Athlon motherboard, we don’t give you BX chipset.” Abit and ASUS tremble and bow to Intel, FIC, Micronics, and Gigabyte turn their backs and make Athlon Boards. Now, there are many Athlon CPUs, but no motherboards to plug them into. That is where we stand today.
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