The Pentium family of processors is the current generation of CPU's for personal computers from Intel.

Pentium processors trace their heritage all the way back to the original Intel 8088 CPU used in the original IBM-PC in 1981.

Intel renamed the 80586 processor Pentium because of the difficulties of trademarking numbers. This was a move by Intel to create confusion in the marketplace which would reduce commodotization in the CPU market and allow them to retain higher profit margins in the face of low-cost competitors like AMD.

Intel retained the Pentium name for suceeding generations of processors. These CPU's bear little internal resemblance to the original Pentium design, but do maintain code compatibility back to the 8088 CPU.

CPU Transistors Max Clock Speed L1 Cache L2 Cache
Pentium III Xeon 28M 1000hz 32KB 64KB
Mobile Celeron 28M 1800hz 32KB 256KB
Pentium III-M 44M 1333hz 32KB 512KB
Pentium III 44M 1400hz 32KB 512KB
Celeron 44M 1800hz 8KB Data + 12KB ETC 128KB
Pentium 4-M 55M 2200hz 8KB Data + 12KB ETC 512KB
Pentium 4 55M 3066hz 8KB Data + 12KB ETC 512KB
Xeon 55M 2800hz 8KB Data + 12KB ETC 512KB
Pentium-M 77M 1700hz 8KB Data + 12KB ETC 1MB
Xeon MP *** 1600hz 20KB 256KB

Pentium