Intel Pentium

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The Intel Pentium was the successor to the Intel 80486 in the Intel x86 line of microprocessors. It was originally going to be named the 80586, but a name consisting of only a number could not be trademarked, which led to the switch to the new name.

Externally, it is functionally the same CPU as the 486, but includes a number of internal improvements to increase its performance:

The memory management unit was upgraded to support 4 Mbyte pages as well as the 4Kbyte pages of the earlier machines. In addition, parity was added to the address bus.