Chapter 24. Pentium® Pro Software Enhancements

The Previous Chapter

This chapter provided a brief introduction to the Pentium® Pro processor's hardware design characteristics.

This Chapter

This chapter provides a detailed description of the software enhancements incorporated in the Pentium® Pro processor. This discussion is directly applicable to all subsequent IA32 processors. It includes:

  • PAE-36 Mode.

  • Global Pages.

  • APIC Enhancements.

  • SMM Enhancement.

  • The Memory Type and Range Registers (MTRRs).

  • The MCA.

  • The Performance Counters.

  • The MSRs.

  • Instruction Set Changes.

  • New/Altered Exceptions.

The Next Chapter

This chapter provides a detailed description of the Microcode Update feature (also referred to as the BIO Update feature). This discussion is directly ...

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.

Start your free trial