70
3 System Board (P/Ns D3657-63001 and D3661-63001)
Devices on the Processor Local Bus
Devices on the Processor Local Bus
The following subsystems are associated with the Processor Local bus:
•
Intel Pentium microprocessor
•
cache memory
•
main memory
Pentium Processor
The Pentium processor uses a 64-bit bus, and is 100% compatible with
Intel’s family of x86 processors. All application software that has been
written for Intel 80386 and Intel 80486 processors can run on the Pentium
without modification. The Pentium processor contains all the features of the
Intel 80486 processor, with the following added features which enhance
performance:
•
Superscalar Architecture
•
Floating Point Unit
•
Dynamic Branch Prediction
•
Instruction and Data cache
•
Data Integrity
•
Ability to support MultiProcessor Specification (MPS) 1.1
•
PCI bus architecture
•
Advanced Power Management capability for reducing power consumption
The processor is seated in a Zero Insertion Force (ZIF) socket.
Superscalar Architecture
The Pentium processor’s superscalar architecture has two instruction
pipelines and a floating-point unit, each capable of independent operation.
The two pipelines allow the Pentium to execute two integer instructions in
parallel, in a single clock cycle. This is called instruction pairing. Each
instruction must be simple. One pipeline will always receive the next
sequential instruction of the one issued to the other pipeline.