The Pentium brand refers to Intel's single-core x86 microprocessor based on the P5 fifth-generation microarchitecture considered here as such only. The name 'Pentium' was derived from the Greek penta, meaning 'five', and the Latin ending -ium.

Introduced on March 22, 1993 , the Pentium succeeded the Intel486, which number "4" signified the fourth-generation microarchitecture. Intel selected the Pentium name after courts had disallowed trademarking of names containing numbers - like "286", "i386", "i486" - though, sometimes, the Pentium is unofficially referred to as i586. In 1996, the original Pentium was succeeded by the Pentium MMX branded CPUs still based on the P5 fifth-generation microarchitecture.

Starting in 1995, Intel (inconsistently) used the "Pentium" registered trademark in the names of families of post-fifth-generations of x86 processors branded as the Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium 4 and Pentium D (see Pentium (brand)). Although they shared the x86 instruction set with the original Pentium (and its predecessors), their microarchitectures were radically different from the P5 microarchitecture of CPUs branded just as the "Pentium" and "Pentium MMX". In 2006, the Pentium ® briefly disappeared from Intel's roadmaps to reemerge in 2007 and solidify in 2008 .

Vinod Dham is often referred to as the father of the Intel Pentium processor.