Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets.
Athlon is the brand name applied to a series of x86-compatible microprocessors designed and manufactured by AMD. The original Athlon was the first seventh-generation x86 processor and the first desktop processor to reach speeds of one gigahertz (GHz). It made its debut as AMD's high-end processor brand on June 23, 1999. Over the years AMD has used the Athlon name with the 64-bit Athlon 64 architecture, the Athlon II, and Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) chips targeting the Socket AM1 desktop SoC architecture, and Socket AM4 Zen (microarchitecture). The modern Zen-based Athlon with a Radeon Graphics processor was introduced in 2019 as AMD's highest-performance entry-level processor.
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 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 anticipated first-person shooter Quake used highly optimized assembly code designed almost entirely around the P5 Pentium's FPU. As a result, the P5 Pentium significantly outperformed other CPUs in the game.
The Intel 386, originally released as 80386 and later renamed i386, is a 32-bit microprocessor designed by Intel. The first pre-production samples of the 386 were released to select developers in 1985, while mass production commenced in 1986. The processor was a significant evolution in the x86 architecture, extending a long line of processors that stretched back to the Intel 8008. The 386 was the central processing unit (CPU) of many workstations and high-end personal computers of the time. The 386 began to fall out of public use starting with the release of the i486 processor in 1989, while in embedded systems the 386 remained in widespread use until Intel finally discontinued it in 2007.
The Intel 486, officially named i486 and also known as 80486, is a microprocessor. It is a higher-performance follow-up to the Intel 386. The i486 was introduced in 1989. It represents the fourth generation of binary compatible CPUs following the 8086 of 1978, the Intel 80286 of 1982, and 1985's i386.
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.
The Cyrix 5x86 was 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.
The Am5x86 processor is an x86-compatible CPU announced in November of 1995 by AMD for use in 486-class computer systems. It began shipping in December of 1995, with a base price of $93 per unit in bulk quantities. Before being released, it was in development under the codename "X5".
The Transmeta Crusoe is a family of x86-compatible microprocessors developed by Transmeta and introduced in 2000.
VIA Technologies, Inc. is a Taiwanese manufacturer of integrated circuits, mainly motherboard chipsets, CPUs, and memory. It was the world's largest independent manufacturer of motherboard chipsets. As a fabless semiconductor company, VIA conducts research and development of its chipsets in-house, then subcontracts the actual (silicon) manufacturing to third-party merchant foundries such as TSMC.
Geode was a series of x86-compatible system-on-a-chip (SoC) microprocessors and I/O companions produced by AMD, targeted at the embedded computing market.
The Emotion Engine is a central processing unit developed and manufactured by Sony Computer Entertainment and Toshiba for use in the PlayStation 2 video game console. It was also used in early PlayStation 3 models sold in Japan and North America to provide PlayStation 2 game support. Mass production of the Emotion Engine began in 1999 and ended in late 2012 with the discontinuation of the PlayStation 2.
The Compaq Presario 1200 was a line of notebook computers produced between 1998 and 2000 by Compaq as part of Compaq Presario line.
VIA CoreFusion is a line of low power x86 processors manufactured by VIA starting in 2003. The Corefusion integrates the Northbridge, graphics processing unit and a V-Link Interface
The PowerPC 600 family was the first family of PowerPC processors built. They were designed at the Somerset facility in Austin, Texas, jointly funded and staffed by engineers from IBM and Motorola as a part of the AIM alliance. Somerset was opened in 1992 and its goal was to make the first PowerPC processor and then keep designing general purpose PowerPC processors for personal computers. The first incarnation became the PowerPC 601 in 1993, and the second generation soon followed with the PowerPC 603, PowerPC 604 and the 64-bit PowerPC 620.
Cyrix III is an x86-compatible Socket 370 CPU. VIA Technologies launched the processor in February 2000. VIA had purchased both Centaur Technology and Cyrix. Cyrix III was to be based upon a core from one of the two companies.
Bonnell is a CPU microarchitecture used by Intel Atom processors which can execute up to two instructions per cycle. Like many other x86 microprocessors, it translates x86 instructions into simpler internal operations prior to execution. The majority of instructions produce one micro-op when translated, with around 4% of instructions used in typical programs producing multiple micro-ops. The number of instructions that produce more than one micro-op is significantly fewer than the P6 and NetBurst microarchitectures. In the Bonnell microarchitecture, internal micro-ops can contain both a memory load and a memory store in connection with an ALU operation, thus being more similar to the x86 level and more powerful than the micro-ops used in previous designs. This enables relatively good performance with only two integer ALUs, and without any instruction reordering, speculative execution or register renaming. A side effect of having no speculative execution is invulnerability against Meltdown and Spectre.
