The Vector Execution Units
One key technology on which both the Pentium 4 and the G4e rely for performance in their most important type of application—media applications (image processing, streaming media, 3D rendering, etc.)—is Single Instruction, Multiple Data (SIMD) computing, also known as vector computing. This section looks at SIMD on both the G4e and the Pentium 4.
A Brief Overview of Vector Computing
Chapter 1 discussed the movement of floating-point and vector capabilities from co-processors onto the CPU die. However, the addition of vector instructions and hardware to a modern, superscalar CPU is a bit more drastic than the addition of floating-point capability. A microprocessor is a Single Instruction stream, Single Data stream (SISD) ...
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