On 13 Nov 98 at 12:08, Monica Veith wrote:

>         I was just going through the welcome message at ftp.cdrom.com
>
>         They mention that they are using a P6?
>
>         I've heard of P II, but P 6?
>
>         Can someone please explain this to me?

  Some people refer to the Pentium as the "P5" and the Pentium Pro as
the "P6".  A Pentium II is, in some senses, a Pentium Pro with MMX,
stood on edge.

  The Pentium Pro fits in its own "Socket 8" motherboards.  It
pioneered the DIB (Dual Independent Bus) and on-board L2 cache of the
PII.  16-bit performance, however, was disappointing, and so it has
remained a niche "server" product and never attained much popularity
as a workstation.  [Of the various general classes of x86
motherboards, there are probably a higher proportion of dual- and
quad-CPU Socket 8 boards than of any other class.]

David G

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