Intel® Instruction Set Extensions Technology
Content Type: Product Information & Documentation | Article ID: 000005779 | Last Reviewed: 01/21/2025
Intel® Instruction Set Extensions are additional instructions that can increase performance when the same operations are performed on multiple data objects. More information can be found on Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer’s Manual Combined Volumes: 1, 2A, 2B, 2C, 2D, 3A, 3B, 3C, 3D, and 4 and Intel® Architecture Instruction Set Extensions Programming Reference.
Instruction Set Extensions can include:
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The Intel® Streaming SIMD Extensions (Intel® SSE) were introduced into the IA-32 architecture in the Pentium III processor family. These extensions enhance the performance of IA-32 processors for advanced 2-D and 3-D graphics, motion video, image processing, speech recognition, audio synthesis, telephony, and video conferencing.
Intel MMX technology introduced single-instruction multiple-data (SIMD) capability into the IA-32 architecture, with the 64-bit MMX registers, 64-bit packed integer data types, and instructions that allowed SIMD operations to be performed on packed integers. Intel SSE expanded the SIMD execution model by adding facilities for handling packed and scalar single precision floating-point values contained in 128-bit registers.
The streaming SIMD extensions 2 (SSE2) were introduced into the IA-32 architecture in the Pentium 4 and Intel Xeon processors. These extensions enhance the performance of IA-32 processors for advanced 3-D graphics, video decoding/encoding, speech recognition, E-commerce, Internet, scientific, and engineering applications. Intel SSE2 uses the single instruction multiple data (SIMD) execution model that is used with MMX technology and Intel SSE. They extend this model with support for packed double precision floating-point values and for 128-bit packed integers.
Intel SSE3 was introduced with the Pentium 4 processor supporting Hyper-Threading Technology (built on 90 nm process technology). Intel SSE3 offers 13 instructions that accelerate performance of Streaming SIMD Extensions technology, Streaming SIMD Extensions 2 technology, and x87-FP math capabilities.
The Intel SSE3 extensions offers 13 instructions that accelerate performance of Streaming SIMD Extensions technology, Streaming SIMD Extensions 2 technology, and x87-FP math capabilities.
Intel SSE4 offers 54 instructions. 47 of them are referred to as Intel SSE4.1 instructions. Intel SSE4.1 was introduced with the Intel Xeon processor 5400 series and Intel Core 2 Extreme processor QX9650. The other seven Intel SSE4 instructions are referred to as Intel SSE4.2 instructions.
Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions (Intel® AVX) introduces 256-bit vector processing capability. The Intel AVX instruction set extends 128-bit SIMD instruction sets by employing a new instruction encoding scheme via a vector extension prefix (VEX). Intel AVX also offers several enhanced features beyond those available in prior generations of 128-bit SIMD extensions.
Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions 2 (Intel® AVX2) provides 256-bit integer SIMD extensions that accelerate computation across integer and floating-point domains using 256-bit vector registers.
The Intel® AVX-512 family comprises a collection of 512-bit SIMD instruction sets to accelerate a diverse range of applications. Intel AVX-512 instructions provide a wide range of functionality that support programming in 512-bit, 256 and 128-bit vector register, plus support for opmask registers and instructions operating on opmask registers.
The collection of 512-bit SIMD instruction sets in Intel AVX-512 include new functionality not available in Intel AVX and Intel AVX2, and promoted instructions similar to equivalent ones in Intel AVX/Intel AVX2 but with enhancement provided by opmask registers not available to VEX-encoded Intel AVX/Intel AVX2.