3DNow!

3DNow! (Said to be "3D No Waiting!" Acronym) is developed by AMD of a SIMD multimedia instruction set, to support single-precision floating-point vector operations, the x86 architecture for enhanced three-dimensional computer image processing on the performance . History 1996 Intel introduced the first Pentium processor with MMX support, greatly improved the ability of the CPU processing multimedia data is widely used in speech synthesis, speech recognition, audio, video codecs, image processing and streaming media and other fields. However, only supports MMX integer, floating-point operations still have to use the traditional x87 coprocessor instructions. Because MMX and x87 registers overlap, in the MMX code into x87 instructions must execute EMMS instruction to clear the MMX state, frequently switching state will seriously affect performance. This limits the MMX instructions in the floating-point intensive programs, such as three-dimensional geometric transformations, clipping and projection applications.
 On the other hand, due to curious stacked registers x87 architecture, so will its line of hardware and software reasonable dispatch instructions are very difficult to raise this as an x86 architecture floating-point performance bottleneck.
 To solve these two problems, AMD launched in 1998, contains 21 instructions of 3DNow! Instruction set, and in its K6-2 processor to achieve. K6-2 is the first to perform floating-point SIMD instructions of x86 processors, is the first model to support flat x86 processor floating-point registers. With 3DNow!, K6-2 achieved the fastest x86 processor floating point unit in each clock cycle up to receive four single-precision floating-point result is the traditional x87 co-processor, four times. Many game makers for the 3DNow! Optimize the program, Microsoft's DirectX 7 for 3DNow! Is optimized, AMD processor-based gaming performance for the first time more than Intel, which greatly enhanced the status of AMD in the minds of consumers. K6-2 and K6-III to become the next hot item on the market. In 1999, with the introduction of AMD Athlon processors, AMD for the 3DNow! Added five new instructions, used to enhance the performance of the DSP side, they are called "extended 3DNow!" (Extended 3DNow!).
 To counter the 3DNow!, Intel Corporation launched in 1999, SSE instruction set. SSE provides almost 3DNow! Of all of the functionality in handling a command more than twice the single-precision floating point; the same time, SSE full support for IEEE 754, single precision floating point processing can be completely replaced by x87. This rapid disintegration of the 3DNow! Advantage. In 1999, with the mainstream operating systems and software are beginning to support the SSE and SSE optimization, AMD in its 2000 release, code-named "Thunderbird" Athlon processor adds full support for SSE (the "classic" Athlon or K7 only supports SSE and MMX-related part in, AMD called "extended MMX" is Extended MMX). Subsequently, AMD is committed to the development of the AMD64 architecture; in the SIMD instruction set, AMD followed Intel, to add their own processor SSE2 and SSE3 support, rather than improving the 3DNow!.