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Roadmap (history) of Intel CPUs?

Pawnless Endgame

Pawnless Endgame

Pawnless Endgame

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There are bits on this in Wikipedia, but it's spread out into different articles. Is there a page (anywhere on the web) that sums up Intel CPUs in a single timeline?

I can remember the 1980s and 1990s and it was all about chasing the megahertz - need for speed :-) So give or take:

286 processors - came out early 80s, 2MHz to 8MHz range

386 processors - mid 80s, 8-25MHz

486 processors - around 1990, probably 33MHz to 75MHz

Pentiums - 1993+, 75MHz up to about 200MHz

Pentium 2 - 1996+, 200MHz up to 450MHz

Pentium 3 - 1999+, 450MHz up to 1GHz

Pentium 4 - 2001+, 1GHz up to 3.8GHz

Then it was no longer about chasing the clockspeed. 3.8GHz was the highest available in the Overclockers shop, which happened in late 2003. So more 'stats' were thrown into the CPU to give it a faster 'working' speed than just clockspeed.

So next up was...

Pentium 4 with hyperthreading - 2004+, 2.x GHz and 3.x GHz range

Pentium D - 2006+, basically they were 2 Pentium 4 dies on the same chip, 3.x GHz range

Then around 2007 time, there were Intel Core and Intel Core²Duo. Obviously dual-core, but else, don't know what the difference were between those? I do remember their products started with T e.g. T3400.

Then after that were i3, i5 and i7. They co-exist together, so I have the impression that i3 is budget i.e. equivalent to Celeron processors, i5 is equiv to 'normal'-line processors like Pentiums and i7 is equiv to Intel Extreme Edition?

Then in terms of generations after Core²Duo, is that where Sandybridge and Ivybridge come in? So Sandybridge came after Core²Duo (might have missed a few here) and Ivybridge came after Sandybridge? Then of course a lot more after that, so that's where I kinda missed the plot. Basically the last 10 years!
 
Thanks :)

As for AMD, I had a Thunderbird 1400 in late 2001, and that out-performed the Pentium 4s of that era. Does anyone remember that cancer research program called United Devices? It benchmarked your current CPU against a P-4 1500MHz and it said that my Thunderbird 1400 was about 33% faster than the P-4.
 
286's went higher for sure and I owned a 386 DX 33 MHz as my first PC CPU after my Amiga 500, 486's went as high as 100 MHz and I had one, maybe a bit higher (120 MHz?) before the first Pentium's came out, P60, P70, P90 were amongst the first I remember.
 
Pawnless Endgame said:
Then around 2007 time, there were Intel Core and Intel Core²Duo. Obviously dual-core, but else, don't know what the difference were between those? I do remember their products started with T e.g. T3400.
Click to expand...

Intel actually through out lots of designs that weren't going anywhere (i.e. "Netburst") and went with an architecture far more in line with Coppermine/Tualatin Pentium 3 for the Core/Core2. Core2 is where they overtook AMD in many, many areas which they are only recovering from now, a decade or so later. Core2 also brought about far larger cache sizes for consumer chips and decent clocks from their 65mn process.

Pawnless Endgame said:
Then after that were i3, i5 and i7. They co-exist together, so I have the impression that i3 is budget i.e. equivalent to Celeron processors, i5 is equiv to 'normal'-line processors like Pentiums and i7 is equiv to Intel Extreme Edition?

Then in terms of generations after Core²Duo, is that where Sandybridge and Ivybridge come in? So Sandybridge came after Core²Duo (might have missed a few here) and Ivybridge came after Sandybridge? Then of course a lot more after that, so that's where I kinda missed the plot. Basically the last 10 years!
Click to expand...

"iSomething" are just product segment differentiation. There have been several uArchs starting with Nehalem, Lynnefield, Sandy Bridge, Ivy etc. on several sockets. Intel EE CPUs are something else in and of them selves, super high end/enthusiast/sucker products :p Where Intel and AMD have diverged somewhat is that Intel love to prune features artificially where AMD typically have a top to bottom support in a given line e.g. VT-d/AMD-V as they weren't competitive. Now with AMD in the SMT game it's slightly different

Unfortunately the specter of Celeron isn't quite gone. Super cut down CPUs to address the low end craptop and box shifter specials. Actually that might not be fair. Recent Celeron CPUs have been pretty good in their respective price/power envelopes.
 
After Core 2 was Nehalem, which I believe was their first quad core CPU on a single die and restored HyperThreading, which had been missing from Pentium D, Core and Core 2. It came in two flavours: Bloomfield for HEDT (Core i7 moniker only), followed by Lynnfield for mainstream platforms. Westmere followed, which was a die shrink that upped the core count to six, but this wasn't ever released on mainstream platforms. After that came Sandy Bridge.
 
Katanga said:
286's went higher for sure and I owned a 386 DX 33 MHz as my first PC CPU after my Amiga 500, 486's went as high as 100 MHz and I had one, maybe a bit higher (120 MHz?) before the first Pentium's came out, P60, P70, P90 were amongst the first I remember.
Click to expand...
Yup.

I had a 386 sx 40mhz

486's went to 100mhz which was slightly faster than the baseline pentium 60mhz.

From memory the original pentium came out around 1996 but that's just going off who had one and when!
 
Katanga said:
286's went higher for sure and I owned a 386 DX 33 MHz as my first PC CPU after my Amiga 500, 486's went as high as 100 MHz and I had one, maybe a bit higher (120 MHz?) before the first Pentium's came out, P60, P70, P90 were amongst the first I remember.
Click to expand...

My 286 in 1990 was a 12.5MHz model.

My first 486 was a DX33 which I upgraded to DX2-80 (AMD) in 1993/4. I then had a P60 Pentium before a succession of others Intel and AMD, too many to count or remember over the years. A heck of a lot of money spent though.
 
You missed the Intel 4004, 8008, 8086, and 8088. All came before 286.

Pawnless Endgame said:
There are bits on this in Wikipedia, but it's spread out into different articles. Is there a page (anywhere on the web) that sums up Intel CPUs in a single timeline?

I can remember the 1980s and 1990s and it was all about chasing the megahertz - need for speed :) So give or take:

286 processors - came out early 80s, 2MHz to 8MHz range

386 processors - mid 80s, 8-25MHz 8-33Mhz (I believe there were 40Mhz also)

486 processors - around 1990, probably 33MHz to 75MHz 25-100Mhz

Pentiums - 1993+, 75MHz up to about 200MHz (60-200)

Pentium 2 - 1996+, 200MHz up to 450MHz 233-450

Pentium 3 - 1999+, 450MHz up to 1GHz

Pentium 4 - 2001+, 1GHz up to 3.8GHz

Then it was no longer about chasing the clockspeed. 3.8GHz was the highest available in the Overclockers shop, which happened in late 2003. So more 'stats' were thrown into the CPU to give it a faster 'working' speed than just clockspeed.

So next up was...

Pentium 4 with hyperthreading - 2004+, 2.x GHz and 3.x GHz range

Pentium D - 2006+, basically they were 2 Pentium 4 dies on the same chip, 3.x GHz range

Then around 2007 time, there were Intel Core and Intel Core²Duo. Obviously dual-core, but else, don't know what the difference were between those? I do remember their products started with T e.g. T3400.

Then after that were i3, i5 and i7. They co-exist together, so I have the impression that i3 is budget i.e. equivalent to Celeron processors, i5 is equiv to 'normal'-line processors like Pentiums and i7 is equiv to Intel Extreme Edition?

Then in terms of generations after Core²Duo, is that where Sandybridge and Ivybridge come in? So Sandybridge came after Core²Duo (might have missed a few here) and Ivybridge came after Sandybridge? Then of course a lot more after that, so that's where I kinda missed the plot. Basically the last 10 years!
Click to expand...
 
It was all about megahertz before and ultimately clockspeed increases resulted in big jumps in performance even though towards the end IPC and power consumption started suffering significantly.

Now it is all about cores as clockspeeds have stagnated. So single core performance is advancing far more slowly (arguably if at all).
 
The original Core chips were released in Core Solo and Core Duo forms - obviously single and dual core but these were for mobile systems mainly.

Core 2 Duo came in 2006 which was the Conroe core with 4MB cache. If I remember rightly Allendale followed later which was the 2MB cache variant We also had Penryn and then Wolfdale which were die shrinks. Core 2 Duo scaled from 1.86GHz to, I think, 3.33GHz.

Core 2 Quad came in 2006 with Kentsfield core and later we had the Yorkfield die shrink. This scaled from 2.4GHz up to, I think, 3.16GHz. Both Core 2 Duo and Quad were socket 775 which was interesting as a decent 775 board could support Pentium 4, Pentium D, Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad giving a nice upgrade path. Back in the day when Intel didn't need to change sockets every 5 seconds.

After that we had the i7 variants which launched in 2009 on the Bloomfield core using socket 1366 for HEDT. This had chips from 2.66GHz to 3.33GHz. We then had the mainstream release later in 2009 which was Lynnfield and was released in i5 and i7 variants on socket 1156. We also had Clarkdale which was the dual core variant for i3 and i5 as confusingly we had both quad and dual core i5s in that era. Lynnfield went from 2.53GHz to 3.06GHz and Clarkdale up to 3.33GHz.

Things then got pretty simple. Sandy Bridge in 2011 which covered i3, i5 and i7 variants but in dual/quad core forms. Ivy Bridge in 2012. Haswell in 2013. Broadwell and Skylake in 2015 then Kaby Lake in 2017. Nothing much to speak of since Sandy Bridge, except for process refinements and marginal IPC gains.

To summarise:

Core 2 Duo - Conroe, Allendale, Penryn, Wolfdale
Core 2 Quad - Kentsfield, Yorkfield
Core i7 1st gen - Bloomfield (HEDT)
Core i3/i5/i7 1st gen - Lynnfield/Clarkdale (Mainstream)
Core i3/i5/i7 2nd gen - Sandy Bridge (Mainstream), Sandy Bridge-E (HEDT)
Core i3/i5/i7 3rd gen - Ivy Bridge (Mainstream), Ivy Bridge-E (HEDT)
Core i3/i5/i7 4th gen - Haswell (Mainstream), Haswell-E (HEDT)
Core i3/i5/i7 5th gen - Broadwell (Mainstream), Broadwell-E (HEDT)
Core i3/i5/i7 6th gen - Skylake (Mainstream), Skylake-X (HEDT)
Core i3/i5/i7 7th gen - Kaby Lake (Mainstream), Kaby Lake-X (HEDT)

Probably a few other variants and bits and pieces but that's the majority really.
 
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Original core architecture was part of centrino system branding if I recall correctly before desktop chips were available as Core/Core 2 etc. iX (i3/i5/i7/i9) series processors are still based on Core architecture? Pentium Pro’s were pretty good I had an 166Mhz chip running at 200Mhz.
 
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