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The Mobile AMD Athlon XP-M Processor
March 2003
Table 1: AMD Processor Support of SIMD Instruction Set Extensions to the x86 Instruction Set
Architecture
AMD Processor:
AMD-K6-2
Processor
AMD Athlon
Processor
AMD Athlon XP-M
Processor
3DNow!
technology
version
supported:
3DNow!
technology
Enhanced 3DNow!
technology
3DNow! Professional
technology
Description of
instructions
supported:
Original 3DNow!
technology
extensions
3DNow! technology
plus 19 MMX
extensions (part of
SSE) plus five
DSP/communications
extensions
Enhanced 3DNow!
technology plus 51 SSE
extensions (completing
SSE support)
3DNow! technology and SSE are largely complementary architectural
enhancements. By implementing them in a variety of ways, software developers are
able to determine how they can utilize the advanced architectural capabilities
enabled by SIMD instruction set extensions. Examples of applications most able to
benefit from the use of these instruction set extensions include speed recognition,
video encoding/decoding, and 3D graphics generations.
Many current software applications that are SIMD-optimized use different
code paths to benefit from 3DNow! technology or SSE, depending on the processor
architecture on which these applications are executed. AMD processor architectures
preceding the mobile AMD Athlon XP-M processor only supported 3DNow! or
enhanced 3DNow! technology, which yielded the following three code path scenarios
for developers:
1) Software optimized exclusively for AMD processor architectures with
3DNow! technology use their 3DNow! technology-optimized code path on
AMD processors supporting 3DNow! technology.
2) Software optimized for both AMD processor architectures with 3DNow!
technology, and other x86 industry processor architectures supporting
SSE, use their 3DNow! technology-optimized code path on AMD
processors supporting 3DNow! technology.