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AMD Athlon™ Processor Microarchitecture Summary
AMD Athlon™ Processor x86 Code Optimization
22007E/0—November 1999
AMD Athlon™ Processor Microarchitecture Summary
The AMD Athlon processor brings superscalar performance
a n d h i g h o p e ra t i n g f re q u e n cy t o P C s y s t e m s r u n n i n g
industry-standard x86 software. A brief summary of the
n e x t -g e n e ra t i o n d e s i g n f e a t u re s i m p l e m e n t e d i n t h e
AMD Athlon processor is as follows:
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High-speed double-rate local bus interface
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Large, split 128-Kbyte level-one (L1) cache
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Dedicated backside level-two (L2) cache
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Instruction predecode and branch detection during cache
line fills
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Decoupled decode/execution core
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Three-way x86 instruction decoding
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Dynamic scheduling and speculative execution
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Three-way integer execution
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Three-way address generation
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Three-way floating-point execution
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3DNow!™ technology and MMX™ single-instruction
multiple-data (SIMD) instruction extensions
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Super data forwarding
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Deep out-of-order integer and floating-point execution
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Register renaming
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Dynamic branch prediction
Th e A M D A t h l o n p ro c e s s o r c o m m u n i c a t e s t h ro u g h a
next-generation high-speed local bus that is beyond the current
Socket 7 or Super7™ bus standard. The local bus can transfer
data at twice the rate of the bus operating frequency by using
b o t h t h e r i s i n g a n d f a l l i n g e d g e s o f t h e c l o c k ( s e e
“A M D A t h l o n ™ S y s t e m B u s ” o n p a g e 1 3 9 f o r m o r e
information).
To reduce on-chip cache miss penalties and to avoid subsequent
data load or instruction fetch stalls, the AMD Athlon processor
has a dedicated high-speed backside L2 cache. The large
128-Kbyte L1 on-chip cache and the backside L2 cache allow the
Summary of Contents for Athlon Processor x86
Page 1: ...AMD Athlon Processor x86 Code Optimization Guide TM...
Page 12: ...xii List of Figures AMD Athlon Processor x86 Code Optimization 22007E 0 November 1999...
Page 16: ...xvi Revision History AMD Athlon Processor x86 Code Optimization 22007E 0 November 1999...
Page 202: ...186 Page Attribute Table PAT AMD Athlon Processor x86 Code Optimization 22007E 0 November 1999...
Page 252: ...236 VectorPath Instructions AMD Athlon Processor x86 Code Optimization 22007E 0 November 1999...
Page 256: ...240 Index AMD Athlon Processor x86 Code Optimization 22007E 0 November 1999...