Processor Generations? AKA 6th and 7th Generation

[BobTheSlob]

Ok, what factors go into deciding the generation of a CPU? The Athlon is AMD's 7th Generation, and the Pentium 4 is Intel's 7th Generation CPU. Why? Are they just the seventh line of CPU's that each company have released? Or are there standards that it has to meet that decides?
Anyone?

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DOWN WITH ACRONYMS!!! TYPE OUT THE WORDS!!!

[pompadorean]

who cares

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-Thunderbird 850 @ 900 and going higher
-128 megs pc133 bargain brand its holding my processor to 900MHZ OCed.
-10GB Western Digital HD
-Abit KT7 MB
-Geforce 2 MX

[slick]

hehe
I would like to know. If anyone knows please tell us.

[The WhiteRabbit]

Hrm, let me see if I can remember my back far enough to answer this question for you. . .

1st gen: 8088 and 8086, aka the IBM XT and AT
2nd gen: 80286 -- I believe this is when PC clones became popular
3rd gen: 80386
4th gen: 80486 -- I believe this is also where AMD's first CPU comes in. Because AMD's 486 had similar performance to the intel chip, it was also considered a 4th generation CPU, even though it was AMD's first processor generation.
5th gen: Intel Pentium. Not called the 586 because you can't trademark/copyright a number. Also included the Pentium MMX, as it was just the Pentium with an additional grouping of instruction sets and more cache. The K6 family, Cyrix and others are also usually grouped here -- although sometimes the K6 family is grouped with the 7th generation CPUs since it performed similarly (a bit better integer, a bit worse floating point) to the Pentium II up until about 300MHz or so when the PII's faster cache just flat out smoked the K6 family.
7th gen: Intel Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Celeron, and Pentium III are all a part of this family as they all used the same core architechture, just with different cache, a few extra instruction sets and die shrinks allowing higher speeds to be reached. AMD's Athlon, Duron and Thunderbird processors are all this generation as well.
8th gen: Intel Pentium 4. The first entierly new architechture from Intel in about 5 years, possibly even more. Currently, the P4 is the *only* x86 8th generation CPU.


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ABit KT7-Raid
AMD Duron 600@927 (103x9)
256 MB of Crucial cas2 PC133@137
30 GB IBM Deskstar GXP75
Ricoh 6x4x32x CD-RW 7080A
Pioneer DVD-105 (16x Slot)
GeForce2 GTS (204 core, 394 mem)
Diamond MX300 (Vortex2)
6916 3DMarks (Mad Onion's 3DMark 2000)

[Arcadian]

Originally posted by The WhiteRabbit:
7th generation CPUs since it performed similarly (a bit better integer, a bit worse floating point) to the Pentium II up until about 300MHz or so when the PII's faster cache just flat out smoked the K6 family.
7th gen: Intel Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Celeron, and Pentium III are all a part of this family as they all used the same core architechture, just with different cache, a few extra instruction sets and die shrinks allowing higher speeds to be reached. AMD's Athlon, Duron and Thunderbird processors are all this generation as well.
8th gen: Intel Pentium 4. The first entierly new architechture from Intel in about 5 years, possibly even more. Currently, the P4 is the *only* x86 8th generation CPU.

Actually, those processors are called the P6 generation of processors, or Intel's sixth generation. The Pentium 4 Processor is Intel's 7th generation, also called the P7. Abbreviating the Pentium 4 as P4 causes some confusion, since P4 actually refers to the 80486. Intel currently has not announced plans for an 8th generation processor, but AMD has, and has called it "Hammer", or the K8.

The generation number has no correlation to performance, as Intel will eventually be able to match the K8 performance with their P7, just as their P6 matched K7 performance for the longest time.

The Pentium 4 is still a new technology, and it requires optimized software, as well as better drivers, and newer steppings, and higher speed grades to really bring out the advantages in the architecture. Intel is releasing an update to the P7 core called Northwood in late 2001, which should allow for some performance increases. Hope this helps.

[The WhiteRabbit]

Whoops, yeah, you're right. You may have noticed in my post that I lost the ability to count higher than 5. Must be that damn Pentium I was using!

That's a joke, based on the recall of some of the first Pentium chips due to their inability to perform some aritmatic operations correctly. Ok, so it's not as funny as it was 5 years ago, and it wasn't that funny then. Another such joke is "Why didn't Intel call the Pentium the 586? Because when they used a Pentium to add 100 to 486 it came up 585.99999999!"

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ABit KT7-Raid
AMD Duron 600@927 (103x9)
256 MB of Crucial cas2 PC133@137
30 GB IBM Deskstar GXP75
Ricoh 6x4x32x CD-RW 7080A
Pioneer DVD-105 (16x Slot)
GeForce2 GTS (204 core, 394 mem)
Diamond MX300 (Vortex2)
6916 3DMarks (Mad Onion's 3DMark 2000)

[This message has been edited by The WhiteRabbit (edited December 20, 2000).]

[Marsolin]

Originally posted by The WhiteRabbit:
4th gen: 80486 -- I believe this is also where AMD's first CPU comes in. Because AMD's 486 had similar performance to the intel chip, it was also considered a 4th generation CPU, even though it was AMD's first processor generation.

I used to have a 33MHZ AMD 386 so they at least started there.

Intel decided against the 586 for the same reason AMD dropped the K7 name. A number can't be trademarked and you can't make any easy distinction between a competitor's products. Once Intel branded the Pentium people first started caring about who made the processor, and not just who made the system.

[Colt]

Originally posted by The WhiteRabbit:
Whoops, yeah, you're right. You may have noticed in my post that I lost the ability to count higher than 5. Must be that damn Pentium I was using!

That's a joke, based on the recall of some of the first Pentium chips due to their inability to perform some aritmatic operations correctly. Ok, so it's not as funny as it was 5 years ago, and it wasn't that funny then. Another such joke is "Why didn't Intel call the Pentium the 586? Because when they used a Pentium to add 100 to 486 it came up 585.99999999!"

To Funny.


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750 Athlon Classic O\C to 1040MHz (going for the 1.1G)
Water cooled pelts
Abit KA7-100
Voodoo5 5500
Kenwood 72x
Sound Blaster Live Gamer
Cambridge Soundworks 5.1 Digital Speaker System
Yamaha 8\4\24 Burner
And the list goes on

[urashima]

lol i have an AMD 8088. beat that.. still boots nicely off of my pascal programmed OS

[The WhiteRabbit]

Originally posted by Marsolin
Intel decided against the 586 for the same reason AMD dropped the K7 name. A number can't be trademarked and you can't make any easy distinction between a competitor's products.

Yes, that's why I said this:

Originally posted by The WhiteRabbit
5th gen: Intel Pentium. Not called the 586 because you can't trademark/copyright a number.

------------------
ABit KT7-Raid
AMD Duron 600@927 (103x9)
256 MB of Crucial cas2 PC133@137
30 GB IBM Deskstar GXP75
Ricoh 6x4x32x CD-RW 7080A
Pioneer DVD-105 (16x Slot)
GeForce2 GTS (204 core, 394 mem)
Diamond MX300 (Vortex2)
6916 3DMarks (Mad Onion's 3DMark 2000)

[This message has been edited by The WhiteRabbit (edited December 21, 2000).]

[warsick]

If you guys only knew what processors were out now... Old threads like these bring out the nostalgia.