The Pentium II bran refers to Intel's sixth-generation microarchitecture ("Intel P6") and x86-compatible microprocessors introduced on May 7, 1997. Containing 7.5 million transistors, the Pentium II featured an improved version of the first P6-generation core of the Pentium Pro CPUs, which contained 5.5 million transistors. In early 1999, the Pentium II was superseded by the Pentium III.