Am386The Am386 CPU is a 100%-compatible clone of the Intel 80386 design released by AMD in March 1991. It sold millions of units, positioning AMD as a legitimate competitor to Intel, rather than being merely a second source for x86 CPUs (then termed 8086-family). While the AM386 CPU was essentially ready to be released prior to 1991, Intel kept it tied up in court. Intel learned of the Am386 when both companies hired employees with the same name who coincidentally stayed at the same hotel, which accidentally forwarded a package for AMD to Intel's employee.
Socket 3Socket 3 was a series of CPU sockets for various x86 microprocessors. It was sometimes found alongside a secondary socket designed for a math coprocessor chip, such as the 487. Socket 3 resulted from Intel's creation of lower voltage microprocessors. An upgrade to Socket 2, it rearranged the pin layout. Socket 3 is compatible with 168-pin socket CPUs. Socket 3 was a 237-pin low insertion force (LIF) or zero insertion force (ZIF) 19×19 pin grid array (PGA) socket suitable for the 3.
Socket 2Socket 2 was one of the series of CPU sockets into which various x86 microprocessors were inserted. It was an updated Socket 1 with added support for Pentium OverDrive processors. Socket 2 was a 238-pin low insertion force (LIF) or zero insertion force (ZIF) 19×19 pin grid array (PGA) socket suitable for the 5-volt, 25 to 66 MHz 486 SX, 486 DX, 486 DX2, 486 OverDrive and 63 or 83 MHz Pentium OverDrive processors.
Compare-and-swapIn computer science, compare-and-swap (CAS) is an atomic instruction used in multithreading to achieve synchronization. It compares the contents of a memory location with a given value and, only if they are the same, modifies the contents of that memory location to a new given value. This is done as a single atomic operation. The atomicity guarantees that the new value is calculated based on up-to-date information; if the value had been updated by another thread in the meantime, the write would fail.
DOSBoxDOSBox is a free and open-source emulator which runs software for MS-DOS compatible disk operating systems—primarily video games. It was first released in 2002, when DOS technology was becoming obsolete. Its adoption for running DOS games is widespread, with it being used in commercial re-releases of those games as well. Before Windows XP, consumer-oriented versions of Windows were based on MS-DOS. Windows 3.0 and its updates were operating environments that ran on top of MS-DOS, and the Windows 9x series consisted of operating systems that were still based on MS-DOS.
NexGenNexGen, Inc. was a private semiconductor company based in Milpitas, California, that designed x86 microprocessors until it was purchased by AMD in 1996. NexGen was a fabless design house that designed its chips but relied on other companies for production. NexGen's chips were produced by IBM's Microelectronics division in Burlington, Vermont alongside PowerPC and DRAM parts. The company was best known for the unique implementation of the x86 architecture in its processors.
Pentium FDIV bugThe Pentium FDIV bug is a hardware bug affecting the floating-point unit (FPU) of the early Intel Pentium processors. Because of the bug, the processor would return incorrect binary floating point results when dividing certain pairs of high-precision numbers. The bug was discovered in 1994 by Thomas R. Nicely, a professor of mathematics at Lynchburg College. Missing values in a lookup table used by the FPU's floating-point division algorithm led to calculations acquiring small errors.
Pin grid arrayA pin grid array (PGA) is a type of integrated circuit packaging. In a PGA, the package is square or rectangular, and the pins are arranged in a regular array on the underside of the package. The pins are commonly spaced 2.54 mm (0.1") apart, and may or may not cover the entire underside of the package. PGAs are often mounted on printed circuit boards using the through hole method or inserted into a socket. PGAs allow for more pins per integrated circuit than older packages, such as dual in-line package (DIP).