1 Your PC’s Performance Features
Benefits of 32-bit Applications
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English
The Pentium Pro
Processor
The Pentium Pro processor in your PC is a 32-bit processor. This means
that it has been specifically designed to execute 32-bit instructions, and
has 32-bit registers for storing data and addresses. Your PC will give
optimized performance when running 32-bit applications.
If you run 16-bit applications, you may be disappointed with the
performance of your PC. This is because 16-bit applications are unable
to use many of the Pentium Pro processor’s performance-enhancing
features.
Using Pipelines to
Accelerate Instruction
Execution
The processor executes instructions in a number of steps through a
sequential process called a pipeline. The Pentium Pro processor has
three pipelines, each of which may contain a queue of instructions.
With 32-bit instructions, the processor will keep the pipeline’s queue
full; as an instruction progresses down the pipeline, another will be
loaded in behind it. With each pulse of the processor’s internal clock, all
instructions will move one stage further down the queue. The result of
using this mechanism is that one instruction can be completed by each
pipeline with each pulse of the clock.
Processor pipeline
Instruction
execution steps
Instruction queue
