Chapter 20. Pentium® Hardware Overview

The Previous Chapter

This chapter provided a detailed description of the software enhancement included in the 486 processor. This discussion is directly applicable to all subsequent IA32 processors and covered:

  • The on-die FPU.

  • The Alignment Checking Feature.

  • Paging-Related Changes.

  • Caching-Related Changes to the Programming Environment.

  • The Test Registers.

  • Instruction Set Changes.

  • New/Altered Exceptions.

This Chapter

This chapter provides an overview of the Pentium® processor's hardware design characteristics. This includes:

  • The Pentium® roadmap.

  • An overview of the Pentium® internal architecture.

  • An overview of the Pentium® FSB.

  • The Caches.

  • The Local APIC.

  • The Test Access Port (TAP). This discussion is directly applicable to all subsequent IA32 processors.

  • FRC Mode. This discussion is directly applicable to all subsequent IA32 processors up to and including the Pentium® III processor.

  • Soft Reset (INIT#). This discussion is directly applicable to all subsequent IA32 processors.

The Next Chapter

This chapter provides a description of the software enhancements incorporated in the Pentium® processor. This discussion is directly applicable to all subsequent IA32 processors. It includes:

  • The VM86 Extensions.

  • Protected Mode Virtual Interrupts.

  • The Debug Extension.

  • The Time Stamp Counter.

  • 4MB Pages.

  • the Machine Check Architecture (MCA).

  • Performance Monitoring.

  • The Local APIC Register Set.

  • The MSRs Added.

  • Instruction Set Changes.

  • New/Altered Exceptions.

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