 | |
| Design firm | Advanced Micro Devices |
|---|---|
| Introduced | 1998 |
| Type | instruction set architecture |
3DNow! is a deprecated extension to the x86 instruction set developed by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). It adds single instruction multiple data (SIMD) instructions to the base x86 instruction set, enabling it to perform vector processing of floating-point vector operations using vector registers. This improvement enhances the performance of many graphics-intensive applications. The first microprocessor to implement 3DNow! was the AMD K6-2, introduced in 1998. In appropriate applications, this enhancement raised the speed by about 2–4 times.[1]
However, the instruction set never gained much popularity, and AMD announced in August 2010 that support for 3DNow! would be dropped in future AMD processors, except for two instructions, PREFETCH and PREFETCHW.[2] These two instructions are also available in Bay-Trail Intel processors.[3]
- ^ "Effectively Utilizing 3DNow in Linux". Linux Journal. December 1, 1999. Archived from the original on 2011-06-07. Retrieved 2010-10-03.
- ^ "3DNow Instructions are Being Deprecated | AMD Developer Central". Blogs.amd.com. 2010-08-18. Archived from the original on 2010-10-24. Retrieved 2010-10-03.
- ^ "IntelE38xx - MinnowBoard Wiki". Archived from the original on 11 February 2017. Retrieved 13 February 2017.