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Winchip
The WinChip series was a low-power Socket 7-based x86 processor designed by Centaur Technology and marketed by its parent company IDT. Overview Design The design of the WinChip was quite different from other processors of the time. Instead of a large gate count and die area, IDT, using its experience from the RISC processor market, created a small and electrically efficient processor similar to the 80486, because of its single pipeline and in-order execution microarchitecture. It was of much simpler design than its Socket 7 competitors, such as AMD K5/ K6, which were superscalar and based on ''dynamic'' translation to buffered micro-operations with advanced instruction reordering ( out of order execution). Use WinChip was, in general, designed to perform well with popular applications that did few (if any) floating point calculations. This included operating systems of the time and the majority of software used in businesses. It was also designed to be a drop-in replacem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cyrix 6x86
The Cyrix 6x86 is a line of sixth-generation, 32-bit x86 microprocessors designed and released by Cyrix in 1995. Cyrix, being a fabless company, had the chips manufactured by IBM and SGS-Thomson. The 6x86 was made as a direct competitor to Intel's Pentium microprocessor line, and was pin compatible. During the 6x86's development, the majority of applications ( office software as well as games) performed almost entirely integer operations. The designers foresaw that future applications would most likely maintain this instruction focus. So, to optimize the chip's performance for what they believed to be the most likely application of the CPU, the integer execution resources received most of the transistor budget. This would later prove to be a strategic mistake, as the popularity of the P5 Pentium caused many software developers to hand-optimize code in assembly language, to take advantage of the P5 Pentium's tightly pipelined and lower latency FPU. For example, the highly anti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RISC
In computer engineering, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a complex instruction set computer (CISC), a RISC computer might require more instructions (more code) in order to accomplish a task because the individual instructions are written in simpler code. The goal is to offset the need to process more instructions by increasing the speed of each instruction, in particular by implementing an instruction pipeline, which may be simpler given simpler instructions. The key operational concept of the RISC computer is that each instruction performs only one function (e.g. copy a value from memory to a register). The RISC computer usually has many (16 or 32) high-speed, general-purpose registers with a load/store architecture in which the code for the register-register instructions (for performing arithmetic and tests) are separate f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pentium MMX
The Pentium (also referred to as P5, its microarchitecture, or i586) is a fifth generation, 32-bit x86 microprocessor that was introduced by Intel on March 22, 1993, as the very first CPU in the Pentium brand. It was instruction set compatible with the 80486 but was a new and very different microarchitecture design from previous iterations. The P5 Pentium was the first superscalar x86 microarchitecture and the world's first superscalar microprocessor to be in mass productionmeaning it generally executes at least 2 instructions per clock mainly because of a design-first dual integer pipeline design previously thought impossible to implement on a CISC microarchitecture. Additional features include a faster floating-point unit, wider data bus, separate code and data caches, and many other techniques and features to enhance performance and support security, encryption, and multiprocessing, for workstations and servers when compared to the next best previous industry standard proc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intel P5
The Pentium (also referred to as P5, its microarchitecture, or i586) is a fifth generation, 32-bit x86 microprocessor that was introduced by Intel on March 22, 1993, as the very first CPU in the Pentium brand. It was instruction set compatible with the 80486 but was a new and very different microarchitecture design from previous iterations. The P5 Pentium was the first superscalar x86 microarchitecture and the world's first superscalar microprocessor to be in mass productionmeaning it generally executes at least 2 instructions per clock mainly because of a design-first dual integer pipeline design previously thought impossible to implement on a CISC microarchitecture. Additional features include a faster floating-point unit, wider data bus, separate code and data caches, and many other techniques and features to enhance performance and support security, encryption, and multiprocessing, for workstations and servers when compared to the next best previous industry standard ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cyrix
Cyrix Corporation was a microprocessor developer that was founded in 1988 in Richardson, Texas, as a specialist supplier of floating point units for 286 and 386 microprocessors. The company was founded by Tom Brightman and Jerry Rogers. In 1992, Cyrix introduced its own i386 compatible processors, the 486SLC and 486DLC. These were higher performance than the Intel parts, but lower price. They were primarily marketed to users looking to upgrade existing machines. Their release sparked a lengthy series of lawsuits with Intel while their foundry partner IBM was releasing the same designs under their own branding. The combination of these events led Cyrix to begin losing money, and the company merged with National Semiconductor on 11 November 1997. National released Cyrix's latest designs under the MediaGX name and then an updated version as Geode in 1999. National sold the line to AMD in August 2003 where it was known as Geode. The line was discontinued in 2019. History At ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PR Rating
The PR (Performance Rating, P-rating) system was a figure of merit developed by AMD, Cyrix, IBM Microelectronics and SGS-Thomson in the mid-1990s (Cyrix announced it in February 1996) as a method of comparing their x86 processors to those of rival Intel. The idea was to consider instructions per cycle (IPC) in addition to the clock speed, so that the processors become comparable with Intel's Pentium that had a higher clock speed with overall lower IPC. Branding The first use of the PR system was in 1995 year, when AMD used it to assert that their AMD 5x86 processor was as fast as a Pentium running at 75 MHz. The designation "P75" was added to the chip to denote this. The letters PR stood for "Performance Rating", but many people mistakenly thought it stood for "Pentium Rating", as the PR was often used to measure performance against Intel's Pentium processor. Later that year, Cyrix also adopted the PR system for its 6x86 and 6x86MX line of processors. These processor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Front Side Bus
A front-side bus (FSB) is a computer communication interface (bus) that was often used in Intel-chip-based computers during the 1990s and 2000s. The EV6 bus served the same function for competing AMD CPUs. Both typically carry data between the central processing unit (CPU) and a memory controller hub, known as the northbridge. Depending on the implementation, some computers may also have a back-side bus that connects the CPU to the cache. This bus and the cache connected to it are faster than accessing the system memory (or RAM) via the front-side bus. The speed of the front side bus is often used as an important measure of the performance of a computer. The original front-side bus architecture has been replaced by HyperTransport, Intel QuickPath Interconnect or Direct Media Interface in modern volume CPUs. History The term came into use by Intel Corporation about the time the Pentium Pro and Pentium II products were announced, in the 1990s. "Front side" refers to the exter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
CPU Multiplier
In computing, the clock multiplier (or CPU multiplier or bus/core ratio) sets the ratio of an internal CPU clock rate to the externally supplied clock. A CPU with a 10x multiplier will thus see 10 internal cycles (produced by PLL-based frequency multiplier circuitry) for every external clock cycle. For example, a system with an external clock of 100 MHz and a 36x clock multiplier will have an internal CPU clock of 3.6 GHz. The external address and data buses of the CPU (often collectively termed front side bus (FSB) in PC contexts) also use the external clock as a fundamental timing base; however, they could also employ a (small) multiple of this base frequency (typically two or four) to transfer data faster. The internal frequency of microprocessors is usually based on FSB frequency. To calculate internal frequency the CPU multiplies bus frequency by a number called the clock multiplier. For calculation, the CPU uses actual bus frequency, and not effective bus frequ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Operating System
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also include accounting software for cost allocation of Scheduling (computing), processor time, mass storage, printing, and other resources. For hardware functions such as input and output and memory allocation, the operating system acts as an intermediary between programs and the computer hardware, although the application code is usually executed directly by the hardware and frequently makes system calls to an OS function or is interrupted by it. Operating systems are found on many devices that contain a computer from cellular phones and video game consoles to web servers and supercomputers. The dominant general-purpose personal computer operating system is Microsoft Windows with a market share of aroun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Micro-operation
In computer central processing units, micro-operations (also known as micro-ops or μops, historically also as micro-actions) are detailed low-level instructions used in some designs to implement complex machine instructions (sometimes termed macro-instructions in this context). Usually, micro-operations perform basic operations on data stored in one or more registers, including transferring data between registers or between registers and external buses of the central processing unit (CPU), and performing arithmetic or logical operations on registers. In a typical fetch-decode-execute cycle, each step of a macro-instruction is decomposed during its execution so the CPU determines and steps through a series of micro-operations. The execution of micro-operations is performed under control of the CPU's control unit, which decides on their execution while performing various optimizations such as reordering, fusion and caching. Optimizations Various forms of μops have long be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Superscalar
A superscalar processor is a CPU that implements a form of parallelism called instruction-level parallelism within a single processor. In contrast to a scalar processor, which can execute at most one single instruction per clock cycle, a superscalar processor can execute more than one instruction during a clock cycle by simultaneously dispatching multiple instructions to different execution units on the processor. It therefore allows more throughput (the number of instructions that can be executed in a unit of time) than would otherwise be possible at a given clock rate. Each execution unit is not a separate processor (or a core if the processor is a multi-core processor), but an execution resource within a single CPU such as an arithmetic logic unit. In Flynn's taxonomy, a single-core superscalar processor is classified as an SISD processor (single instruction stream, single data stream), though a single-core superscalar processor that supports short vector operations could ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AMD K6
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactured its own processors, the company later outsourced its manufacturing, a practice known as going fabless, after GlobalFoundries was spun off in 2009. AMD's main products include microprocessors, motherboard chipsets, embedded processors, graphics processors, and FPGAs for servers, workstations, personal computers, and embedded system applications. History First twelve years Advanced Micro Devices was formally incorporated by Jerry Sanders, along with seven of his colleagues from Fairchild Semiconductor, on May 1, 1969. Sanders, an electrical engineer who was the director of marketing at Fairchild, had, like many Fairchild executives, grown frustrated with the increasing lack of support, opportunity, and flexibility within the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
