user manual

22007E/0—November 1999 AMD Athlon™ Processor x86 Code Optimization
About this Document 1
1
Introduction
The AMD Athlon™ processor is the newest microprocessor in
the AMD K86™ family of microprocessors. The advances in the
AMD Athlon processor take superscalar operation and
out-of-order execution to a new level. The AMD Athlon
processor has been designed to efficiently execute code written
for previous-generation x86 processors. However, to enable the
fastest code execution with the AMD Athlon processor,
programmers should write software that includes specific code
optimization techniques.
About this Document
This document contains information to assist programmers in
creating optimized code for the AMD Athlon processor. In
addition to compiler and assembler designers, this document
has been targeted to C and assembly language programmers
writing execution-sensitive code sequences.
This document assumes that the reader possesses in-depth
knowledge of the x86 instruction set, the x86 architecture
(registers, programming modes, etc.), and the IBM PC-AT
platform.
This guide has been written specifically for the AMD Athlon
processor, but it includes considerations for