Timeline of Major Microarchitectures
A microarchitecture is, to put it shortly, an implementation of an architecture. Modern x86 processors are usually designed in this fashion:
- The architecture (x86) is established
- An initial implementation is designed (this becomes the first "core" and the first microarchitecture)
- Revised versions of that core are made (said to be using the same microarchitecture)
- Eventually a new, substantially different core is designed, which gives rise to a new microarchitecture
In general, knowing the microarchitecture used inside a particular chip tells you a great deal about its guts, which makes this valuable knowledge. So for your convenience, we have compiled all of the post-486 microarchitectures employed by AMD, Intel, and VIA's various x86 products.
These dates are representative of the earliest "introduction" dates of the various products (most of which come from Chris Hare). Below each microarchitecture is a short list of some of the major products that are based on that microarchitecture; server, value, and unusual (Core 2 Extreme and such) products have generally been excluded for simplicity.
Lines between microarchitectures represent the inheritance of major features, and also the time period in which products of a certain family were available. The dotted line from one Intel "P6" to another is meant to represent that while the second group of P6 products (Pentium M and Core) is based heavily on the other, there was a period of time in which there were no P6 products on the market.
Two groups of as-yet-unreleased products (scheduled for released later in 2008) are shown: VIA's Isaiah and Intel's Nehalem. These will be updated with more information when they are released.
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