The latest Intel processors at a glance

Intel is working hard on its processors.

The processor is the heart of every computer, because its quality is decisive for what the computer can actually do. The market is currently dominated by the two manufacturers Intel and AMD, but because they have launched veritable families of processors on the market, users quickly lose track.

It all depends on the intended use

One of the reasons for this diversity is that the processors develop their strengths in different applications. While some processors primarily guarantee fast and smooth gaming enjoyment, others are designed more for graphics and video applications. And finally, there are the all-rounders, which are preferably used on computers that are primarily used for office applications.

The development at a glance

The most important step towards the development of modern processors took place between the 1930s and the 1950s, when electromagnetic computers were replaced by tube computers and later by transistors. In the 1970s, the microprocessor was finally developed, combining all important functions in a very small space. Since then, it has been possible to develop ever more powerful processors - in the 1980s, experts even predicted exponential growth in computer performance. In the meantime, however, this growth has slowed down considerably. New processors currently only deliver a single-digit percentage increase in performance.

But the next quantum leap seems to be on the horizon. Developers are focusing on carbon as the material of the future. As soon as it is possible to replace switches, conductors and transistors with carbon nanotubes, the next big step in the development of processors is expected.

These are the current processors at a glance:

Pentium 3 and 4

The Pentium family was established by Intel in 1993 as the successor to the i486 CPU series. The first Pentium was followed by other processors with this designation, such as the Pentium III and 4.

The Pentium III was introduced in February 1999. It differs from its predecessor, the Pentium II, in its integrated SSE unit, which enables fast floating point operations. Successor models could not completely replace the Pentium III, especially in notebooks, due to its high power consumption. The Pentium M was therefore developed for these devices on the basis of this processor and was used in notebooks from 2003.

In November 2000, the Pentium 4 was released, which differed significantly from its predecessor in that it was developed with a particular focus on SSE performance and a high clock frequency. A new microarchitecture was also introduced with this processor.

Dual Core

The dual core is a processor that manages the various program requests on two cores. Because one request is processed by each core, two requests can be processed almost simultaneously. Multi-core processors were introduced from 2005.

Quad core

A quad core is a processor with four cores. These were introduced around a year after the dual cores and enable almost four times the processing speed of the single-core processor.

Core i series

The Core i series was introduced by Intel from 2008 and has been continuously developed further. The current models are based on the Haswell microarchitecture introduced in 2013. The abbreviations i3, i5 and i7 are used to classify the processors into different classes with various features. The flagship of these processors is currently the i7, which is installed in high-end devices.

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