Intel ARCHITECTURE IA-32 User Manual

Multi-Core and Hyper-Threading Technology 7
7-11
It is possible to structure the producer-consumer model in an interlaced
manner such that it can minimize bus traffic and be effective on
multi-core processors without shared second-level cache.
In this interlaced variation of the producer-consumer model, each
scheduling quanta of an application thread comprises of a producer task
and a consumer task. Two identical threads are created to execute in
parallel. During each scheduling quanta of a thread, the producer task
starts first and the consumer task follows after the completion of the
producer task; both tasks work on the same buffer. As each task
completes, one thread signals to the other thread notifying its
Example 7-2 Basic Structure of Implementing Producer Consumer Threads
(a) Basic structure of a producer thread function
void producer_thread()
{ int iter_num = workamount - 1; // make local copy
int mode1 = 1; // track usage of two buffers via 0 and 1
produce(buffs[0],count); // placeholder function
while (iter_num--) {
Signal(&signal1,1); // tell the other thread to commence
produce(buffs[mode1],count); // placeholder function
WaitForSignal(&end1);
mode1 = 1 - mode1; // switch to the other buffer
}
}
b) Basic structure of a consumer thread
void consumer_thread()
{ int mode2 = 0; // first iteration start with buffer 0, than alternate
int iter_num = workamount - 1;
while (iter_num--) {
WaitForSignal(&signal1);
consume(buffs[mode2],count); // placeholder function
Signal(&end1,1);
mode2 = 1 - mode2;
}
consume(buffs[mode2],count);
}

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)