Pentium II
<processor> Intel Corporation's successor to the Pentium Pro.
The Pentium II can execute all the instructions of all the earlier members of
the Intel 80x86 processor family. There are four versions targetted at different
user markets. The Celeron is the simplest and cheapest. The standard Pentium II
is aimed at mainstream home and business users. The Pentium II Xeon is intended
for higher performance business servers. There is also a mobile version of the
Pentium II for use in portable computers.
All versions of the Pentium II are packaged on a special daughterboard that
plugs into a card-edge processor slot on the motherboard. The daughterboard is
enclosed within a rectangular black box called a Single Edge Contact (SEC)
cartridge. The budget Celeron may be sold as a card only without the box.
Consumer line Pentium II's require a 242-pin slot called Slot 1. The Xeon uses a
330-pin slot called Slot 2. Intel refers to Slot 1 and Slot 2 as SEC-242 and
SEC-330 in some of their technical documentation. The daughterboard has mounting
points for the Pentium II CPU itself plus various support chips and cache memory
chips. All components on the daughterboard are normally permanently soldered in
place. Previous generation Socket 7 motherboards cannot normally be upgraded to
accept the Pentium II, so it is necessary to install a new motherboard.
All Pentium II processors have Multimedia Extensions (MMX) and integrated Level
One and Level Two cache controllers. Additional features include Dynamic
Execution and Dual Independent Bus Architecture, with separate 64 bit system and
cache busses. Pentium II is a superscalar CPU having about 7.5 million
transistors.
The first Pentium II's produced were code named Klamath. They were manufactured
using a 0.35 micron process and supported clock rates of 233, 266, 300 and 333
MHz at a bus speed of 66 MHz. Second generation Pentium II's, code named
Deschutes, are made with a 0.25 micron process and support rates of 350, 400 and
450 MHz at a bus speed of 100 MHz.
Home.
(1998-10-06)
Nearby terms:
Pentium « Pentium 2 « Pentium 3 « Pentium II
» Pentium III » Pentium II Xeon » Pentium Pro
|