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180 points leotravis10 | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.221s | source
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kens ◴[] No.43538380[source]
Author here for your Pentium questions :-)
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CalRobert ◴[] No.43539219[source]
Why wasn’t the Pentium’s successor the Sexium?
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kens ◴[] No.43539448[source]
Ha ha. Internally, the successor to the Pentium (P5) had the codename P6, but it was called the Pentium Pro externally rather than anything six-related.

Instead, Intel decided to go with an incomprehensible system of naming: Pentium Overdrive, Pentium MMX, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium III Xeon, Pentium D, Pentium M, Pentium Extreme Edition, etc. Good luck trying to figure out the ordering of these processors.

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1. chasil ◴[] No.43542350[source]
Bob Colwell gave an interview on the Pentium Pro, the first "out of order" Intel x86.

His observations on the Itanium make me gasp.

https://www.sigmicro.org/media/oralhistories/colwell.pdf

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38459128

'I said, wait I am sorry to derail this meeting. But how would you use a simulator if you don't have a compiler? He said, well that's true we don't have a compiler yet, so I hand assembled my simulations. I asked "How did you do thousands of line of code that way?" He said “No, I did 30 lines of code”. Flabbergasted, I said, "You're predicting the entire future of this architecture on 30 lines of hand generated code?" [chuckle], I said it just like that, I did not mean to be insulting but I was just thunderstruck. Andy Grove piped up and said "we are not here right now to reconsider the future of this effort, so let’s move on".'

Colwell is (more formally) the author of The Pentium Chronicles which I plan to read someday.

https://www.amazon.com/Pentium-Chronicles-Robert-P-Colwell/d...