Improvements in the Intel Core2 Penryn Processor Family Architecture and Microarchitecture

Overview

Intels Corporation continuously seeks to improve the performance of each Intel Architecture microprocessor generation through architectural initiatives as well as process and circuit improvements. The predecessor to the Penryn family of processors, the 65nm Intel Core microarchitecture, codename Merom, led the competition in performance. The paper explains how in the Penryn family of processors, the divide instructions are updated from Radix-4 to Radix-16. To minimize the hardware investment, integer divides are handled as floating point divides, so conversion techniques between integer and floating point are also discussed.