Intel ARCHITECTURE IA-32 - Introduction

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Introduction
The IA-32 Intel
®
Architecture Optimization Reference Manual describes
how to optimize software to take advantage of the performance
characteristics of the current generation of IA-32 Intel architecture
family of processors. The optimizations described in this manual apply
to IA-32 processors based on the Intel
®
NetBurst
®
microarchitecture,
the Intel
®
Pentium
®
M processor family and IA-32 processors that
support Hyper-Threading Technology.
The target audience for this manual includes software programmers and
compiler writers. This manual assumes that the reader is familiar with the
basics of the IA-32 architecture and has access to the Intel
®
Architecture
Software Developer’s Manual: Volume 1, Basic Architecture;
Vo lu me 2 A, Instruction Set Reference A-M; Volume 2B, Instruction Set
Reference N-Z, and Volume 3, System Programmer’s Guide.
When developing and optimizing software applications to achieve a
high level of performance when running on IA-32 processors, a detailed
understanding of IA-32 family of processors is often required. In many
cases, knowledge of IA-32 microarchitectures is required.
This manual provides an overview of the Intel NetBurst
microarchitecture and the Intel Pentium M processor microarchitecture.
It contains design guidelines for high-performance software applications,
coding rules, and techniques for many aspects of code-tuning. These
rules are useful to programmers and compiler developers.
The design guidelines that are discussed in this manual for developing
high-performance software apply to current as well as to future IA-32
processors. The coding rules and code optimization techniques listed