Intel Overview of New Instructions and Extensions

Microsoft Specific

The Pentium III Processor and other processors such as the Pentium processor with MMX technology and Pentium II processor have instructions to enable development of optimized multimedia applications. The instructions are implemented through extensions to previously implemented instructions. This technology uses the single-instruction, multiple-data (SIMD) technique. By processing data elements in parallel, applications with media-rich bitstreams can significantly improve performance by using SIMD instructions.

The most direct way to use these instructions is to inline the assembly language instructions into your source code. However, this can be time consuming and tedious. Instead, Intel provides easy implementation by using API extension sets, referred to as intrinsics.

Intrinsics Availability on Intel Processors

Processors	MMX technology intrinsics	Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE)	Streaming SIMD Extensions 2 (SSE2) instructions
Processors that support SSE2	Yes	Yes	Yes
Pentium III	Yes	Yes	Not available
Pentium II	Yes	Not available	Not available
Pentium with MMX technology	Yes	Not available	Not available
Pentium Pro	Not available	Not available	Not available
Pentium	Not available	Not available	Not available

The following topics are covered:

• Benefits of Using Intrinsics

• Intrinsic Conventions

• Intrinsic Categories and Supporting Extensions

See Also

Reference

MMX, SSE, and SSE2 Intrinsics

Change History

Date	History	Reason
July 2009	Removed broken link.	Content bug fix.