The Intel Corporation ships the first Pentium chips (80586), featuring a 60 MHz clock speed, 100+ MIPS, and a 64 bit data path.

Pentium is a brand used for a series of x86 architecture-compatible microprocessors produced by Intel. The original Pentium was released in 1993. After that, the Pentium II and Pentium III were released.

In their form as of March 2022, Pentium processors are considered entry-level products that Intel rates as "two stars", meaning that they are above the low-end Atom and Celeron series, but below the faster Intel Core lineup, and workstation/server Xeon series.

As of 2017, Pentium processors have little more than their name in common with earlier Pentiums, which were Intel's flagship processor for over a decade until the introduction of the Intel Core line in 2006. They are based on both the architecture used in Atom and that of Core processors. In the case of Atom architectures, Pentiums are the highest performance implementations of the architecture. Pentium processors with Core architectures prior to 2017 were distinguished from the faster, higher-end i-series processors by lower clock rates and disabling some features, such as hyper-threading, virtualization and sometimes L3 cache.

The name "Pentium" is originally derived from the Greek word pente (), meaning "five", a reference to the prior numeric naming convention of Intel's 80x86 processors (808680486), with the Latin ending -ium since the processor would otherwise have been named 80586 using that convention.

In 2017, Intel split Pentium into two line-ups:

Pentium Silver, aiming for low-power devices and shares architecture with Atom and Celeron.

Pentium Gold, aiming for entry-level desktop and using existing architecture, such as Kaby Lake or Coffee Lake.

Intel Corporation, stylized as intel, is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is the developer of the x86 series of microprocessors, the processors found in most personal computers (PCs). Incorporated in Delaware, Intel ranked No. 45 in the 2020 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue for nearly a decade, from 2007 to 2016 fiscal years.Intel supplies microprocessors for computer system manufacturers such as Acer, Lenovo, HP, and Dell. Intel also manufactures motherboard chipsets, network interface controllers and integrated circuits, flash memory, graphics chips, embedded processors and other devices related to communications and computing.

Intel (integrated and electronics) was founded on July 18, 1968, by semiconductor pioneers Gordon Moore (of Moore's law) and Robert Noyce, and is associated with the executive leadership and vision of Andrew Grove. Intel was a key component of the rise of Silicon Valley as a high-tech center. Noyce was a key inventor of the integrated circuit (microchip). Intel was an early developer of SRAM and DRAM memory chips, which represented the majority of its business until 1981. Although Intel created the world's first commercial microprocessor chip in 1971, it was not until the success of the personal computer (PC) that this became its primary business.

During the 1990s, Intel invested heavily in new microprocessor designs fostering the rapid growth of the computer industry. During this period, Intel became the dominant supplier of microprocessors for PCs and was known for aggressive and anti-competitive tactics in defense of its market position, particularly against Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), as well as a struggle with Microsoft for control over the direction of the PC industry.The Open Source Technology Center at Intel hosts PowerTOP and LatencyTOP, and supports other open-source projects such as Wayland, Mesa, Threading Building Blocks (TBB), and Xen.