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Concept
P6 (microarchitecture)
Summary
The P6 microarchitecture is the sixth-generation Intel x86 microarchitecture, implemented by the Pentium Pro microprocessor that was introduced in November 1995. It is frequently referred to as i686. It was planned to be succeeded by the NetBurst microarchitecture used by the Pentium 4 in 2000, but was revived for the Pentium M line of microprocessors. The successor to the Pentium M variant of the P6 microarchitecture is the Core microarchitecture which in turn is also derived from P6.
P6 was used within Intel's mainstream offerings from the Pentium Pro to Pentium III, and was widely known for low power consumption, excellent integer performance, and relatively high instructions per cycle (IPC).
The P6 core was the sixth generation Intel microprocessor in the x86 line. The first implementation of the P6 core was the Pentium Pro CPU in 1995, the immediate successor to the original Pentium design (P5).
P6 processors dynamically translate IA-32 instructions into sequences of buffered RISC-like micro-operations, then analyze and reorder the micro-operations to detect parallelizable operations that may be issued to more than one execution unit at once. The Pentium Pro was the first x86 microprocessor designed by Intel to use this technique, though the NexGen Nx586, introduced in 1994, did so earlier.
Other features first implemented in the x86 space in the P6 core include:
Speculative execution and out-of-order completion (called "dynamic execution" by Intel), which required new retire units in the execution core. This lessened pipeline stalls, and in part enabled greater speed-scaling of the Pentium Pro and successive generations of CPUs.
Superpipelining, which increased from Pentium's 5-stage pipeline to 14 of the Pentium Pro and early model of the Pentium III (Coppermine), and eventually morphed into less than 10-stage pipeline of the Pentium M for embedded and mobile market due to energy inefficiency and higher voltage issues that encountered in the predecessor, and then again lengthening the 10- to 12-stage pipeline back to the Core 2 due to facing difficulty increasing clock speed while improving fabrication process can somehow negate some negative impact of higher power consumption on the deeper pipeline design.
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