Intel ARCHITECTURE IA-32 User Manual

General Optimization Guidelines 2
2-9
Performance Tools
Intel offers several tools that can facilitate optimizing your application’s
performance.
Intel
®
C++ Compiler
Use the Intel C++ Compiler following the recommendations described
here. The Intel Compiler’s advanced optimization features provide good
performance without the need to hand-tune assembly code. However,
the following features may enhance performance even further:
• Inlined assembly
• Intrinsics, which have a one-to-one correspondence with assembly
language instructions but allow the compiler to perform register
allocation and instruction scheduling. Refer to the “Intel C++
Intrinsics Reference” section of the Intel® C++ Compiler User’s
Guide.
• C++ class libraries. Refer to the “Intel C++ Class Libraries for
SIMD Operations Reference” section of the Intel® C++ Compiler
User’s Guide.
• Vectorization in conjunction with compiler directives (pragmas).
Refer to the “Compiler Vectorization Support and Guidelines”
section of the Intel® C++ Compiler User’s Guide.
The Intel C++ Compiler can generate an executable which uses features
such as Streaming SIMD Extensions 2. The executable will maximize
performance on the current generation of IA-32 processor family (for
example, a Pentium 4 processor) and still execute correctly on older
processors. Refer to the “Processor Dispatch Support” section in the
Intel® C++ Compiler User’s Guide.

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)