Pentium 4

Definition - What does Pentium 4 mean?

Pentium 4 was a series of single-core central processing units (CPU) for desktop PCs and laptops. The series was designed by Intel and launched in November 2000. Pentium 4 clock speeds were over 2.0 GHz.

Intel shipped Pentium 4 processors until August 2008. Pentium 4 variants included code named Willamette, Northwood, Prescott and Cedar Mill with clock speeds that varied from 1.3-3.8 GHz.

The Pentium 4 processor replaced the Pentium III via an embedded seventh-generation x86 microarchitecture, known as Netburst Microarchitecture, which was the first new chip architecture launched after the P6 microarchitecture in the 1995 Pentium Pro CPU model.

Techopedia explains Pentium 4

The Pentium 4 architecture enhanced chip processing in the following ways:

  • Performance was boosted by increased processor frequency.
  • A rapid-execution engine allowed each instruction execution to occur in a half-clock cycle.
  • The 400 MHz system bus had data transfer rates (DTR) of 3.2 GBps.
  • Execution trace cache optimized cache memory and improved multimedia units and floating points.
  • Advanced dynamic execution enabled faster processing, which was especially critical for voice recognition, video and gaming.

After May 2005, Intel produced dual-core processors as Pentium Extreme Edition and Pentium D, which was a shift toward dividing instructions among processors (parallelism). In July 2006, Intel released the Intel Core2 line of quad, dual and single core processors.

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