The Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE)
Why?
The single most important impetus behind the Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE) was to achieve a significant performance boost when executing multimedia applications. To this end, Intel® needed to:
Extend the SIMD model to include SIMD FP capability (as MMX made SIMD integer operations possible).
Provide new instructions specifically tailored to boost the performance of multimedia applications.
Enhance memory write operations and to make more efficient use of the FSB.
It should be noted that applications other than multimedia applications can also realize significant benefit from the new SSE feature set.
Detecting SSE Support
Refer to Figure 31-1 on page 759. The programmer can determine if a processor supports ...
Get The Unabridged Pentium 4 IA32 Processor Genealogy now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
