Intel BX80619I73960X, Datasheet

Page: 26 / 120

Technologies
26 Datasheet, Volume 1
3.6 Intel
®
Advanced Vector Extensions (Intel
®
AVX)
Intel
®
Advanced Vector Extensions (Intel
®
AVX) is a new 256-bit vector SIMD
extension of Intel Architecture. The introduction of Intel AVX starts with the 2nd
Generation Intel
®
Core™ Processor Family Desktop. Intel AVX accelerates the trend of
parallel computation in general purpose applications like image, video, and audio
processing, engineering applications such as 3D modeling and analysis, scientific
simulation, and financial analysts.
Intel AVX is a comprehensive ISA extension of the Intel 64 Architecture. The main
elements of Intel AVX are:
• Support for wider vector data (up to 256-bit) for floating-point computation
• Efficient instruction encoding scheme that supports 3 operand syntax and
headroom for future extensions
• Flexibility in programming environment, ranging from branch handling to relaxed
memory alignment requirements
• New data manipulation and arithmetic compute primitives, including broadcast,
permute, fused-multiply-add, etc
The key advantages of Intel AVX are:
• Performance – Intel AVX can accelerate application performance using data
parallelism and scalable hardware infrastructure across existing and new
application domains:
— 256-bit vector data sets can be processed up to twice the throughput of 128-bit
data sets
— Application performance can scale up with number of hardware threads and
number of cores
• Power Efficiency – Intel AVX is extremely power efficient. Incremental power is
insignificant when the instructions are unused or scarcely used. Combined with the
high performance that it can deliver, applications that lend themselves heavily to
using Intel AVX can be much more energy efficient and realize a higher
performance-per-watt.
• Extensibility – Intel AVX has built-in extensibility for the future vector extensions:
— OS context management for vector-widths beyond 256 bits is streamlined
— Efficient instruction encoding allows unlimited functional enhancements:
• Vector width support beyond 256 bits
• 256-bit Vector Integer processing
• Additional computational and/or data manipulation primitives.
• Compatibility – Intel AVX is backward compatible with previous ISA extensions
including Intel SSE4:
— Existing Intel SSE applications/library can:
• Run unmodified and benefit from processor enhancements
• Recompile existing Intel SSE intrinsic using compilers that generate Intel
AVX code
• Inter-operate with library ported to Intel AVX
— Applications compiled with Intel AVX can inter-operate with existing Intel SSE
libraries
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