Pentium compatible processor
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A Pentium-compatible processor is a 32-bit processor computer chip which supports the instructions in the IA-32 instruction set that were implemented by the original Intel Pentium processor (also known as the Classic Pentium). The IA-32 instruction set first appeared in the 80386 processor; the 80486 added a few instructions to IA-32, and the original Pentium added a few more instructions beyond that.
Pentium-compatible processors are sometimes referred to as i586-architecture processors. Later processors are also consided to be Pentium-compatible, because they still support the instructions supported by the original Pentium.
This class of processors is typically used in IBM PC compatible computers.
[edit] List
Here are some processors that implement all of the instructions that the original Pentium processor implemented:
- AMD K5
- AMD K6
- AMD Athlon
- AMD Duron
- AMD Opteron
- AMD Athlon 64
- AMD Sempron
- AMD Turion 64
- Intel Pentium
- Intel Pentium MMX
- Intel Pentium Pro
- Intel Pentium II
- Intel Pentium III
- Intel Pentium 4
- Intel Pentium D
- Intel Pentium Extreme Edition
- Intel Celeron
- Intel Xeon
- Intel Pentium M
- Intel Core
- Intel Core 2
- Cyrix 5x86
- Cyrix 6x86
[edit] Software Compatibility
Any software that uses only instructions supported by the classic Pentium processor, and that can run on that processor is considered to be Pentium compatible.
Software that uses instructions added to IA-32 after the classic Pentium was released, and that therefore will not run on a standard Pentium, is considered not to be Pentium compatible.
[edit] 64-bit Processors
Recently, 64-bit processors, such as the AMD Athlon 64, are becoming more popular. These processors allow much larger application address spaces in computers using them. The 64-bit AMD64 instruction set is not supported by the classic Pentium processor, so 64-bit software will not work on systems using Pentium or post-Pentium processors that only support the 32-bit IA-32 instruction set.
