Intel IA32 (80x86) Microprocessors

Dr. Doug L. Hoffman Computer Science 330 Spring 2002

A Classic CISC Microprocessor

The 80x86 family of Microprocessors is the dominant PC processor architecture:
Around since 1978. Continually enhanced for two decades. Takes Upward compatibility to an extreme. Started as a Modified Accumulator Architecture. Now a General Purpose Register-Memory Architecture (sort of).

Over 400,000,000 have been sold.

History of the 80x86

Intel 4004 (4 bit) and 8008 (8 bit) accumulator architecture embedded control processors. Early 1970s. Intel 8080, and enhanced 8 bit processor that found its way into some of the first commercial PCs. Also a straightforward accumulator architecture. Mid 1970s.

History of the 80x86

Intel 8086, 16 bit assembly-language compatible extension of the 8080 architecture. 1978.
All registers 16 bits wide. Additional registers all have dedicated uses. Extended Accumulator architecture.

IBM selects the 8088, an 8086 with an 8 bit external bus, as the processor for the IBM PC. Early 1980.

History of the 80x86

Intel 8087 floating-point coprocessor adds ~60 new instructions to the 8086 instruction set. 1978.
All floating-point instructions processed on the coprocessor chip. Additional registers arranged as a stack to avoid making instructions even longer (and avoid changes to the 8086). Adds 8 80 bit floating-point registers arranged as a stack. Hardware designers decided to handle stack overflow/underflow in software. This never worked, resulting in a 50% reduction in FP performance. Extended Stack architecture.

History of the 80x86

Intel 80286 further extends the architecture by increasing the address space. 1982.
Expanded memory address space from 20 bits to 24 bits. Added memory mapping and multilevel protection scheme (see book). Added new instructions to support memory management. Added real addressing mode to support legacy 8086 code.

History of the 80x86

Intel 80386 moves up to 32 bit architecture. 1985.
Additional registers (segment pointers). All GP registers now 32 bits. Address space now 32 bits with several new addressing modes. Added paging support under existing segmented architecture. Almost a general purpose register machine.

History of the 80x86

Intel 80486 basically improves performance. 1989. Intel Pentium, 1992, and P6, 1995, also improve performance and add multiprocessor support (only four new instructions. Since then more versions than you can sensibly keep track of.

Intel CPU Specs

There are a large number of processor models and packages available from Intel.
Celeron, Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium 4. Slot 1, Socket 370, Socket 7, etc.

Intel CPU Specs, cont.

Intel CPU Specs, cont.

Instruction Set Madness

The x86 isnt all that complex -- it just doesnt make a lot of sense, Mike Johnson, AMD

Almost all registers have dedicated uses; stack pointers, data segment pointers, index register, etc, depending on mode. Segmented address space plus page translation. Instructions can be from 1 to 17 bytes long. Addressing mode use seemingly haphazardly applied to instructions. Definitely not orthogonal. Weird, half baked stack architecture for FP.

Re gister s of the 8086 CPU

8 General Purpose 16 bit Registers
Four 16-bit registers can be divided into two 8-bit registers AX = AH|AL - Accumulator (Accumulator High|Accumulator Low) BX = BH|BL - Base (High|Low)- can be used as "pointer" CX = CH|CL - Count (High|Low) - used for counting loops DX = DH|DL - Data (High|Low) - paired with AX for "combined" 32bit register. DX is high word, AX is low word. Four 16-bit registers used for Indexing and Stack SI - Source Index - used for indirect addressing DI - Destination Index - used for indirect addressing SP - Stack Pointer - accesses Stack Segment BP - Base Pointer

Re gister s of the 8086 CPU

6 Special Purpose Registers
CS (Code); DS (Data); ES (Extra); (SS) Stack segment registers IP - Instruction Pointer holds address of next instruction Flag Register - OF|DF|IF|TF|SF|ZF|AF|PF|CF "flag" bits Overflow Flag set if last operation caused "signed overflowed" Sign Flag set if last operation was negative Zero Flag set if last operation resulted in 0 Carry Flag set if last operation had carry out

Re gister s of the 8086 CPU

Memory Address Spaces
CS:IP pair points to code address space DS:offset points to data address space SS:SP pair points to stack address space ES: extra data address space FS:GS even more extra data segment pointers add in 386.

Pentium III Architecture

Pentium III Die

Send in the Clones: AMD Athlon

frequently used instructions extremely fast (typically in one clock). Less common or very complex instructions need to be decoded in a slower process (usually >2). AMD calls these OPs 'MOps', for Macro Operations. dispatch 9 Ops at the same time (Pentium only 5) 256 kB L2 cache running on a backside bus at CPU clock speed. 128 kB L1 cache, 64 kB data and 64 kB instruction cache. 3 (three!) out-of-order, fully parallel FPU pipelines. Much RISC-ier core than Pentium III. Intel can only supply 60% of the market due to capacity limits.

Send in the Clones: AMD Athlon

Send in the Clones: AMD Athlon

Send in the Clones: Via Cyrix III

Developed by National Semiconductor 133 MHz Front Side Bus (although it supports 66 MHz, and 100 MHz FSB). 256 KB integrated L2 cache along with a 64 KB integrated L1 cache. 3dNow! SIMD instructions in a dual pipelined FPU. As with the MII, the Cyrix III supports MMX. superscalar design featuring two seven stage pipelines allowing two processing streams to be processed simultaneously. two level translation buffer and a 512 entry branch target buffer. out-of-order execution through register renaming and data forwarding and bypassing to resolve data dependencies between pipelines. Speculative execution after a predicted branch is also supported. 15% to 20% cheaper than a comparable Celeron. Hope to capture 10% of market. Subject of a lot of legal action by Intel but VIA is still in business.

Send in the Clones: Via Cyrix III

Intels Latest:

The Pentium 4 2.4GHz

478 pin packaging

Intels Latest:

The Pentium 4 2.4GHz

Intels Latest:

The Pentium 4 2.4GHz

The newer Pentium 4 chips, with their 512K L2 caches, perform extremely well, peaking out at nearly 900 MFLOPS at larger matrix sizes than the Athlon XP.

Conclusions:

The Pentium 4 is faster at some things, and the Athlon XP is faster at others. On balance, the two processors are very closely matched. "Which is fastest?" depends entirely on what it is you want to do.
Tech-report.com

And The Future Belongs to... Itanium

The IA64 processor previously known as Merced

The Last Word

Intel added new features to the original instruction set as you might add clothing to a packed bag, P & H.

I dont really want one but I have a half dozen.