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IBM 5x86C
The Cyrix 5x86 is a line of x86 microprocessors designed by Cyrix and released on June 5 of 1995. Cyrix, being a fabless company, had the chips manufactured by IBM. The line came out about 5 months before the more famous Cyrix 6x86. The Cyrix 5x86 was one of the fastest CPUs ever produced for Socket 3 computer systems. With better performance in most applications than an Intel Pentium processor at 75 MHz, the Cyrix Cx5x86 filled a gap by providing a medium-performance processor option for 486 Socket 3 motherboards (which are incapable of handling Intel's Pentium CPUs, apart from the Pentium Overdrive). The IBM 5x86C is an IBM branded and produced version of the Cyrix-designed Cyrix Cx5x86 CPU. Previous IBM x86 processors, IBM 386SLC and IBM 486SLC, were based on modified Intel designs. Design The Cyrix 5x86 processor, codename "M1sc", was based on a scaled-down version of the "M1" core used in the Cyrix 6x86, which provided 80% of the performance for a 50% decrease in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cyrix
Cyrix Corporation was a microprocessor developer that was founded in 1988 in Richardson, Texas, as a specialist supplier of floating point units for 286 and 386 microprocessors. The company was founded by Tom Brightman and Jerry Rogers. Terry Rogers was also serving as the company Chief Executive Officer and president up until December 9, 1996, when he stepped down from this role, but remained on the Board of Directors. In 1992, Cyrix introduced its own i386 compatible processors, the 486SLC and 486DLC. These had higher performance than the Intel parts, but a lower price. They were primarily marketed to users looking to upgrade existing machines. Their release sparked a lengthy series of lawsuits with Intel while their foundry partner IBM was releasing the same designs under their own branding. The combination of these events led Cyrix to begin losing money, and the company merged with National Semiconductor on 11 November 1997. National released Cyrix's latest designs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intel 80486
The Intel 486, officially named i486 and also known as 80486, is a microprocessor introduced in 1989. It is a higher-performance follow-up to the i386, Intel 386. It represents the fourth generation of binary compatible CPUs following the Intel 8086, 8086 of 1978, the Intel 80286 of 1982, and 1985's i386. It was the first tightly-instruction pipeline, pipelined x86 design as well as the first x86 chip to include more than one million transistors. It offered a large on-chip Cache (computing), cache and an integrated floating-point unit. When it was announced, the initial performance was originally published between 15 and 20 VAX Unit of Performance, VAX MIPS, between 37,000 and 49,000 Dhrystone, dhrystones per second, and between 6.1 and 8.2 double-precision Whetstone (benchmark), megawhetstones per second for both 25 and 33 MHz version. A typical 50 MHz i486 executes 41 million instructions per second Dhrystone MIPS and SPECint, SPEC integer rating of 27.9.Chen, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Branch Prediction
In computer architecture, a branch predictor is a digital circuit that tries to guess which way a branch (e.g., an if–then–else structure) will go before this is known definitively. The purpose of the branch predictor is to improve the flow in the instruction pipeline. Branch predictors play a critical role in achieving high performance in many modern pipelined microprocessor architectures. Two-way branching is usually implemented with a conditional jump instruction. A conditional jump can either be "taken" and jump to a different place in program memory, or it can be "not taken" and continue execution immediately after the conditional jump. It is not known for certain whether a conditional jump will be taken or not taken until the condition has been calculated and the conditional jump has passed the execution stage in the instruction pipeline (see fig. 1). Without branch prediction, the processor would have to wait until the conditional jump instruction has passed the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Am5x86
The Am5x86 processor is an x86-compatible CPU announced in November 1995 by AMD for use in 486-class computer systems. It began shipping in December 1995, with a base price of $93 per unit in bulk quantities. Before being released, it was in development under the codename "X5". Specifications The Am5x86 (also known as the 5x86-133, Am5x86, X5-133, and sold under various 3rd-party labels such as the Kingston Technology "Turbochip") is an Enhanced Am486 processor with an internally set multiplier of 4, allowing it to run at 133 MHz on systems without official support for clock-multiplied DX2 or DX4 486 processors. Like all Enhanced Am486, the Am5x86 featured write-back L1 cache, and unlike all but a few, a generous 16 kilobytes rather than the more common 8 KB. A rare 150 MHz-rated OEM part was also released by AMD. Since having a clock multiplier of four is not part of the original Socket 3 design (and that the 486 only have a single CLKMUL pin anyway ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SGS-Thomson
STMicroelectronics NV (commonly referred to as ST or STMicro) is a European multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is the largest of such companies in Europe. It was founded in 1987 from the merger of two state-owned semiconductor corporations: ''Thomson Semiconducteurs'' of United States/France and ''SGS Microelettronica'' of Italy. The company is incorporated in the Netherlands and headquartered in Plan-les-Ouates, Switzerland. Its shares are traded on Euronext Paris, the Borsa Italiana and the New York Stock Exchange. History ST was formed in 1987 by the merger of two government-owned semiconductor companies: Italian SGS Microelettronica (where SGS stands for ''Società Generale Semiconduttori'', "General Semiconductor Company"), and French ''Thomson Semiconducteurs'', the semiconductor arm of Thomson. SGS Microelettronica originated in 1972 from a previous merger of two companies: * ATES (Aquila Tubi e Semiconduttori), a vacuum tube ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computer Bug
A software bug is a design defect ( bug) in computer software. A computer program with many or serious bugs may be described as ''buggy''. The effects of a software bug range from minor (such as a misspelled word in the user interface) to severe (such as frequent crashing). In 2002, a study commissioned by the US Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology concluded that "software bugs, or errors, are so prevalent and so detrimental that they cost the US economy an estimated $59 billion annually, or about 0.6 percent of the gross domestic product". Since the 1950s, some computer systems have been designed to detect or auto-correct various software errors during operations. History Terminology ''Mistake metamorphism'' (from Greek ''meta'' = "change", ''morph'' = "form") refers to the evolution of a defect in the final stage of software deployment. Transformation of a ''mistake'' committed by an analyst in the early stages of the softw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pentium Pro
The Pentium Pro is a sixth-generation x86 microprocessor developed and manufactured by Intel and introduced on November 1, 1995. It implements the P6 (microarchitecture), P6 microarchitecture (sometimes termed i686), and was the first x86 Intel CPU to do so. The Pentium Pro was originally intended to replace the original Pentium (original), Pentium in a full range of applications. Later, it was reduced to a more narrow role as a server and high-end desktop processor. The Pentium Pro was also used in supercomputers, most notably ASCI Red, which was the first computer to reach over one teraFLOPS in 1996 and held the number one spot in the TOP500 list from 1997 to 2000. ASCI Red used two Pentium Pro CPUs on each computing node. While the Pentium and Pentium MMX had 3.1 and 4.5 million transistors, respectively, the Pentium Pro contained 5.5 million transistors. It was capable of both dual- and quad-processor configurations and only came in one form factor, the relatively l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AMD K5
The K5 is AMDs first x86 processor to be developed entirely in-house. Introduced in March 1996, its primary competition was Intel's Pentium microprocessor. The K5 was an ambitious design, closer to a Pentium Pro than a Pentium regarding technical solutions and internal architecture. However, the final product was closer to the Pentium regarding performance, although faster clock-for-clock compared to the Pentium. Technical details The K5 was based upon an internal highly parallel RISC processor architecture with an x86 decoding front-end. The K5 offered good x86 compatibility and the in-house-developed test suite proved invaluable on later projects. All models had 4.3 million transistors, with five integer units that could process instructions out of order and one floating-point unit. The branch target buffer was four times the size of the Pentium's and register renaming helped overcome register dependencies. The chip's speculative execution of instructions reduced pipeline st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
32-bit
In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in a maximum of 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calculations more efficiently and process more data per clock cycle. Typical 32-bit personal computers also have a 32-bit address bus, permitting up to 4 GiB of RAM to be accessed, far more than previous generations of system architecture allowed. 32-bit designs have been used since the earliest days of electronic computing, in experimental systems and then in large mainframe and minicomputer systems. The first hybrid 16/32-bit microprocessor, the Motorola 68000, was introduced in the late 1970s and used in systems such as the original Apple Macintosh. Fully 32-bit microprocessors such as the HP FOCUS, Motorola 68020 and Intel 80386 were launched in the early to mid 1980s and became dominant by the early 1990s. This gener ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transistor
A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch electrical signals and electric power, power. It is one of the basic building blocks of modern electronics. It is composed of semiconductor material, usually with at least three terminal (electronics), terminals for connection to an electronic circuit. A voltage or Electric current, current applied to one pair of the transistor's terminals controls the current through another pair of terminals. Because the controlled (output) power can be higher than the controlling (input) power, a transistor can amplify a signal. Some transistors are packaged individually, but many more in miniature form are found embedded in integrated circuits. Because transistors are the key active components in practically all modern electronics, many people consider them one of the 20th century's greatest inventions. Physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld proposed the concept of a field-effect transisto ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
6x86
The Cyrix 6x86 is a line of sixth-generation, 32-bit x86 microprocessors designed and released by Cyrix in 1995. Cyrix, being a fabless company, had the chips manufactured by IBM and SGS-Thomson. The 6x86 was made as a direct competitor to Intel's Pentium microprocessor line, and was pin compatible. During the 6x86's development, the majority of applications ( office software as well as games) performed almost entirely integer operations. The designers foresaw that future applications would most likely maintain this instruction focus. So, to optimize the chip's performance for what they believed to be the most likely application of the CPU, the integer execution resources received most of the transistor budget. This would later prove to be a strategic mistake, as the popularity of the P5 Pentium caused many software developers to hand-optimize code in assembly language, to take advantage of the P5 Pentium's tightly pipelined and lower latency FPU. For example, the highly anti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
386SLC
The 386SLC is an Intel-licensed version of the 386SX (32-bit internal, 16-bit external, 24-bit memory addressing), developed and manufactured by IBM in 1991. It included power-management capabilities and an 8KB internal CPU cache, which enabled it to yield comparable performance to Intel 386, 386DX processors of the same clock speed, which were considerably more expensive. Known inside IBM as ''"Super Little Chip"'' for its initials, it was used in the IBM PS/2 35, 40 and 56 Series and in the IBM PS/ValuePoint 325T, but never gained much market share. This was mainly due to an agreement with Intel, in which IBM was not allowed to sell their CPUs if they were not part of a system or upgrade board. It was also marketed as an optional upgrade for Intel 8086, 8086-equipped IBM PS/2 25 Series computers. Design and Technology Built with complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology, the IBM 386SLC had a 161-square millimeter die (integrated circuit), die. It was available wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
