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Intel Overview of New Instructions and Extensions

Microsoft Specific

The Pentium III Processor and other processors such as the Pentium processor with MMX technology and Pentium II processor have instructions to enable development of optimized multimedia applications. The instructions are implemented through extensions to previously implemented instructions. This technology uses the single-instruction, multiple-data (SIMD) technique. By processing data elements in parallel, applications with media-rich bitstreams can significantly improve performance by using SIMD instructions.

The most direct way to use these instructions is to inline the assembly language instructions into your source code. However, this can be time consuming and tedious. Instead, Intel provides easy implementation by using API extension sets, referred to as intrinsics.

Intrinsics Availability on Intel Processors

Processors

MMX technology intrinsics

Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE)

Streaming SIMD Extensions 2 (SSE2) instructions

Processors that support SSE2

Yes

Yes

Yes

Pentium III

Yes

Yes

Not available

Pentium II

Yes

Not available

Not available

Pentium with MMX technology

Yes

Not available

Not available

Pentium Pro

Not available

Not available

Not available

Pentium

Not available

Not available

Not available

The following topics are covered:

See Also

Reference

MMX, SSE, and SSE2 Intrinsics