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Comment by Dachande663 | Hacker News Reader

Today I learn where the name Pentium actually came from (fifth in Intel's release history, pent).

And they only named it that due to the fact they could not trademark a number, like 386.

The name came out due to a court case affirming Intel cant copyright a 3 number string and AMD is free to sell 386 :)

It’s a shame they named their next CPU “Pentium Pro” instead of “Hexium” (or “Sexium”!)

> It’s a shame they named their next CPU “Pentium Pro” instead of “Hexium” (or “Sexium”!)

Penta- comes from the Greek, so hexa- would be more appropriate:

The Latin is quint- and sext-.

And if you have a movie trilogy, and one more move comes out, it becomes a tetralogy, and not a quadrilogy, also because of Greek etymology:

Yes, so Pentium II, III and IV totally makes sense. :)

It kinda does make sense to a degree:

i386 – Intel i386/80386 (in 1985) or AMD386 / AM386 (in 1991)

i486 – Intel i486/80486 (in 1989) or AMD486 / AM486 (in 1993)

i586 – Intel Pentium (in 1993) or AMD-K5 (in 1996)

i686 – Intel Pentium Pro & 2 (in 1995) or AMD-K6 (in 1997)

i786 – Intel Pentium 4 (in 2000) or AMD-K7 (in 1999)