AMD AMD-K6-2/400 User Guide - Page 262
FloatingPoint and MMX™/3DNow!™ Instruction Compatibility, Registers, Exceptions
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Preliminary Information AMD-K6™-2E+ Embedded Processor Data Sheet 23542A/0-September 2000 more information on 3DNow! instructions, see the 3DNow!™ Technology Manual, order# 21928. For more information on the 3DNow! technology DSP extensions, see the AMD Extensions to the 3DNow!™ and MMX™ Instructions Sets Manual, order# 22466. The multimedia execution unit can execute MMX instructions in a single processor clock. All MMX and 3DNow! arithmetic instructions are pipelined for higher performance. To increase performance, the processor is designed to simultaneously decode all MMX and 3DNow! instructions with most other instructions. 11.3 Floating-Point and MMX™/3DNow!™ Instruction Compatibility Registers The eight 64-bit MMX registers (which are also utilized by 3DNow! instructions) are mapped on the floating-point stack. This enables backward compatibility with all existing software. For example, the register saving event that is performed by operating systems during task switching requires no changes to the operating system. The same support provided in an operating system's interrupt 7 handler (Device Not Available) for saving and restoring the floating-point registers also supports saving and restoring the MMX registers. Exceptions There are no new exceptions defined for supporting the MMX and 3DNow! instructions. All exceptions that occur while decoding or executing an MMX or 3DNow! instruction are handled in existing exception handlers without modification. FERR# and IGNNE# MMX instructions and 3DNow! instructions do not generate f l o a t i n g -p o i n t e x c e p t i o n s . H oweve r, i f a n u n m a s ke d floating-point exception is pending, the processor asserts FERR# at the instruction boundary of the next floating-point instruction, MMX instruction, 3DNow! instruction or WAIT instruction. The sampling of IGNNE# asserted only affects processor o p e ra t i o n d u r i n g t h e ex e c u t i o n o f a n e r ro r -s e n s i t ive f l oa t i n g -po i n t i n st r u c ti on , MMX i n st r u c t i on , 3D N ow ! instruction or WAIT instruction when the NE bit in CR0 is set to 0. 240 Floating-Point and Multimedia Execution Units Chapter 11