Intel ARCHITECTURE IA-32 User Manual

IA-32 Intel® Architecture Optimization
3-6
Checking for Streaming SIMD Extensions 3 Support
SSE3 includes 13 instructions, 11 of those are suited for SIMD or x87
style programming. Checking for support of these SSE3 instructions is
similar to checking for SSE support. You must also check whether your
operating system (OS) supports SSE. The OS requirements for SSE3
Support are the same as the requirements for SSE.
To check whether your system supports the x87 and SIMD instructions
of SSE3, follow these steps:
1. Check that your processor has the
cpuid instruction.
2. Check the ECX feature bit 0 of
cpuid for SSE3 technology
existence.
3. Check for OS support for SSE.
Example 3-6 shows how to find the SSE3 feature bit (bit 0 of ECX) in
the
cpuid feature flags.
Example 3-5 Identification of SSE2 by the OS
bool OSSupportCheck() {
_try {
__asm xorpd xmm0, xmm0 ; SSE2}
_except(EXCEPTION_EXECUTE_HANDLER) {
if _exception_code()==STATUS_ILLEGAL_INSTRUCTION)
/* SSE2not supported */
return (false);
}
/* SSE2 are supported by OS */
return (true);
}

Intel ARCHITECTURE IA-32 Specifications

General

Instruction Set	x86
Instruction Set Type	CISC
Memory Segmentation	Supported
Operating Modes	Real mode, Protected mode, Virtual 8086 mode
Max Physical Address Size	36 bits (with PAE)
Max Virtual Address Size	32 bits
Architecture	IA-32 (Intel Architecture 32-bit)
Addressable Memory	4 GB (with Physical Address Extension up to 64 GB)
Floating Point Registers	8 x 80-bit
MMX Registers	8 x 64-bit
SSE Registers	8 x 128-bit
Registers	General-purpose registers (EAX, EBX, ECX, EDX, ESI, EDI, ESP, EBP), Segment registers (CS, DS, SS, ES, FS, GS), Instruction pointer (EIP), Flags register (EFLAGS)
Floating Point Unit	Yes (x87)