HP DL360 The Intel processor roadmap for industry-standard servers technology - Page 2

Abstract Intel® continues to introduce processor technologies that boost the performance of x86 processors in multi-threaded environments. This technology brief describes these processors and some of the more important innovations as they affect HP industry-standard enterprise servers. Introduction As standards-based computing has pushed into the enterprise server market, the demand for increased performance and greater variety in processor solutions has grown. To meet this demand, Intel continues to introduce processor innovations and new speeds. This technology brief summarizes the recent history and near-term plans for Intel processors as they relate to the industry-standard enterprise server market. Intel processor architecture and microarchitectures The Intel processor architecture refers to its x86 instruction set and registers that are exposed to programmers. The current x86 instruction set includes all instructions that the original 16-bit 8086 processor could execute and the enhanced instructions offered by the successor x86 processors. Processor manufacturers such as Intel and AMD use a common processor architecture to maintain backward and forward compatibility of the instruction set among generations of their processors. Intel refers to its 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the x86 processor architecture as Intel Architecture (IA)-32 and IA-64. In comparison, the term "microarchitecture" refers to each processor's physical design that implements the instruction set. Processors with different microarchitectures from Intel and AMD x86 processors for example, can still use a common instruction set. Figure 1 shows the relationship between the x86 processor architecture and Intel's evolving microarchitectures, as well as processors based on these microarchitectures. Figure 1. Intel processor architecture and microarchitectures for industry-standard enterprise servers 2