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What came after the 486?

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Re: What came after the 486?

#21

Post by jl6 »

rasz wrote: post #14
Anonasty wrote: post #9

The years when Pentium came was a bit of an shitshow. As the article said, there were 7 companies producing 486 processors but after that the market was mostly Intel, AMD and little Cyrix. Then came socket-A vs. slot-A etc. Now looking back it seems like there was lot of changes in short period of time.

Things started progressing so fast in mid nineties that brand new top of the line computer was being matched in performance by low end offerings 2 years later. Lasted up to late 2000. December 1998 $85 Celeron 300A handily beating June 97 $594 Pentium 233 MMX, not to mention overclocked one matching 1998 $621-824 Pentium 2s. January 2002 $120 Duron 1300/Celeron 1300 beating 2000 $1000 Athlon 1000/Pentium 3 1000-1133…

It's so much fun living through the steep bit of an S curve that we imagine it might last forever...

Re: What came after the 486?

#22

Post by canpan »

jl6 wrote: post #21
rasz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things started progressing so fast in mid nineties that brand new top of the line computer was being matched in performance by low end offerings 2 years later. Lasted up to late 2000. December 1998 $85 Celeron 300A handily beating June 97 $594 Pentium 233 MMX, not to mention overclocked one matching 1998 $621-824 Pentium 2s. January 2002 $120 Duron 1300/Celeron 1300 beating 2000 $1000 Athlon 1000/Pentium 3 1000-1133…

It's so much fun living through the steep bit of an S curve that we imagine it might last forever...

I get the feeling. The 90s in particular, maybe even until crysis went super fast. Then tech felt incredibly stagnant for over a decade.

But the time since 2020 feels much faster again. It's scary! But it's exciting.

Re: What came after the 486?

#23

Post by twoodfin »

chasil wrote: post #16
laurencerowe wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i686 was the microarchitecture introduced with the Pentium Pro and then Pentium II.

If I am correct, the Pentium Pro was the first "out of order" design. It specialized in 32-bit code, and did not handle 16-bit code very well. The original Pentium I believe introduced a second pipeline that required a compiler to optimize for it to achieve maximum performance. AMD actually made successful CPUs based on Berkeley RISC, similar to SPARC (they used register windows). The AMD K5 had this RISC CPU at its…

Because of the branding change, history will remember the Pentium (P5). It was really the Pentium Pro (P6) that put Intel leaps ahead on x86 microarchitecture, a lead they’d hold with only a few minor stumbles for two decades.

Bob Colwell (mentioned elsewhere ITT) wrote a fascinating technical history of the P6: The Pentium Chronicles.

Re: What came after the 486?

#25

Post by p_l »

squater wrote: post #17
chasil wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I am correct, the Pentium Pro was the first "out of order" design. It specialized in 32-bit code, and did not handle 16-bit code very well. The original Pentium I believe introduced a second pipeline that required a compiler to optimize for it to achieve maximum performance. AMD actually made successful CPUs based on Berkeley RISC, similar to SPARC (they used register windows). The AMD K5 had this RISC CPU at its…

Small correction, Pentium Pro was the first OoO microprocessor from Intel. Others like IBM POWER1 came earlier

It was intel's (at least) second OoO processor, after i960 - from which it pulled important team members.

Re: What came after the 486?

#26

Post by mrweasel »

rob74 wrote: post #13

Another interesting episode "after the 486" was the switch from 32 bit to 64 bit, where Intel wanted to bury the ghost of the 8086 once and for all and switched to a completely new architecture ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IA-64 ), while AMD opted to extend the x86 architecture ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64 ). This was probably the first time that customers voted with their feet against Intel in a major w…

If this is true or not I don't know, but I worked on a project with an HP employee and we were talking about the Itanium. At some point the HP guy goes "You know we more or less designed that thing, right?"

I would tend to believe that the Itanium is an HP product, given that they've always seems more invested in the platform than Intel.

Re: What came after the 486?

#27

Post by p_l »

phire wrote: post #20
rob74 wrote: post #13

Another interesting episode "after the 486" was the switch from 32 bit to 64 bit, where Intel wanted to bury the ghost of the 8086 once and for all and switched to a completely new architecture ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IA-64 ), while AMD opted to extend the x86 architecture ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64 ). This was probably the first time that customers voted with their feet against Intel in a major w…

What I find interesting is that Intel engineers actually designed their own 64-bit extension, somewhere along the same lines as AMD64. Intel's marketing department threw a fit, they didn't want the Pentium 4 competing with their flagship Itanium. Bob Colwell was directly ordered to remove the 64-bit functionality. Which he kind of did, kind of didn't. The functionally was still there, but fused off when Netburst ship…

Around the time of K8 being released, I remember reading official intel roadmaps announced to normal people, and they essentially planned that for at least few more years if not more they will segment into increasingly consumer-only 32bit and IA-64 on the higher end

Re: What came after the 486?

#28

Post by consp »

twoodfin wrote: post #23
chasil wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I am correct, the Pentium Pro was the first "out of order" design. It specialized in 32-bit code, and did not handle 16-bit code very well. The original Pentium I believe introduced a second pipeline that required a compiler to optimize for it to achieve maximum performance. AMD actually made successful CPUs based on Berkeley RISC, similar to SPARC (they used register windows). The AMD K5 had this RISC CPU at its…

Because of the branding change, history will remember the Pentium (P5). It was really the Pentium Pro (P6) that put Intel leaps ahead on x86 microarchitecture, a lead they’d hold with only a few minor stumbles for two decades. Bob Colwell (mentioned elsewhere ITT) wrote a fascinating technical history of the P6: The Pentium Chronicles .

The major stumble being having to cross licence AMD for the x64 opcode design thus ensuring at least two players in the field (and due to how it's going only two).

Re: What came after the 486?

#29

Post by irusensei »

Fun fact: Bonnel Atoms (D510 etc) were not affected by the meltdown vulnerability that plagued every Pentium processor since the 1995 Pentiums. These Atoms use purely in-order execution engines which kinda makes them supercharged 486s.

Re: What came after the 486?

#30

Post by Ekaros »

jl6 wrote: post #21
rasz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things started progressing so fast in mid nineties that brand new top of the line computer was being matched in performance by low end offerings 2 years later. Lasted up to late 2000. December 1998 $85 Celeron 300A handily beating June 97 $594 Pentium 233 MMX, not to mention overclocked one matching 1998 $621-824 Pentium 2s. January 2002 $120 Duron 1300/Celeron 1300 beating 2000 $1000 Athlon 1000/Pentium 3 1000-1133…

It's so much fun living through the steep bit of an S curve that we imagine it might last forever...

On other hand not being hopelessly outdated in a relatively short time does have perks. It is cheaper to not have to update constantly and still getting decent performance.
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