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SSE3 Technology In Intel Prescott

Posted by timothy on from the prince-albert-in-a-can dept.

topmo writes "X-bit labs has posted an article called 'SSE Technology in New Intel Prescott Processors.' In this detailed technology coverage they talking about the SSE (SSE3?) technology implemented in future Intel Prescott processors, its exciting history, its peculiarities and advantages offered to the software developers. Also they compare the cons and pros of the new PNI (Prescott New Instructions) with AMD x86-64."

2 of 17 comments (clear)

  1. Re:sse? by drgnvale · · Score: 3, Informative

    From the article, top of the second page...
    "And what is SSE? Before going further, let's recall the meaning of the abbreviations: SSE is Streaming SIMD Extension, SIMD is Single Instruction Multiple Data (several operands are processed by a single command)."

  2. Re:the x86 is at a dead end by Graelin · · Score: 4, Informative

    All things being equal, you're right. But this is the real world. The underlying architecture plays a VERY important role, it's much deeper than "just the processor." I believe the OP was not referring to X86 processors themselves, but the entire platform.

    Itanium, Sparc, Power-series, etc. are designed from the start for high-performance, IT services. Would they make a great desktop? Who knows, probably not. Do they kick x86's arse in the server / workstation world? You betcha.

    I agree with the OP that the x86 architecture is probably limited by it's high degree of backward compatibility. I don't have technical facts to back this up, but I think common-sense would agree with me here.

    Now to contradict myself... It's important to note that Sparc has always been (and continues to be) backward compatible. I can run code from my SparcStation on an E10k and it will run exactly the same. In this way, the x86 platform is flawed. It was not designed for a lot of the tasks we need it to do TODAY. Sparc was, or they just got lucky, or both...

    As long as the thing supports things like larger memories and larger integers, and as long as it continues to get faster, then the processor is completely irrelevant.

    That's great, but x86 doesn't support "larger memories."