Internet Streaming SIMD Extensions

Abstract
Because floating-point computation is the heart of 3D geometry, speeding up floating-point computation is vital to overall 3D performance. To produce a visually perceptible difference in graphics applications, Intel's 32-bit processors--based on the IA-32 architecture--required an increase of 1.5 to 2 times the native floating-point performance. One path to better performance involves studying how the system uses data. Today's 3D applications can execute a lot faster by differentiating between data used repeatedly and streaming data--data used only once and discarded. Pentium III's new floating- point extension lets programmers designate data as streaming and provides instructions that handle this data efficiently. The authors designed the Internet Streaming SIMD Extensions to enable a new level of visual computing on the volume PC platform. They discuss their results in terms of boosting the performance of 3D and video applications.

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