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The Intel Pentium II is a sixth-generation x86 microprocessor introduced in 1997 that extends the Pentium Pro’s P6 microarchitecture into the mainstream desktop market, combining dynamic out-of-order execution, register renaming, speculative execution, and micro-op translation with MMX support and full IA-32 compatibility. Its most visible characteristic is the move to Slot 1 packaging using the SECC cartridge, which places the CPU and external L2 cache chips on a daughterboard-like module, with the cache typically running at half core frequency over a dedicated backside bus rather than at full speed as in the Pentium Pro. The first Pentium II core, Klamath, was manufactured on a 0.35 µm process, used Slot 1, and targeted higher-end desktop systems with relatively high power dissipation, while the later Deschutes core moved to a 0.25 µm process, still on Slot 1, reducing power consumption and enabling significantly higher clock frequencies. Technically, the Pentium II is best understood as the processor that brought the P6 execution model to the mass-market PC, bridging the workstation-oriented Pentium Pro and the later Pentium III.