MMX technology extension to the Intel architecture

Abstract

Designed to accelerate multimedia and communications software, MMX technology improves performance by introducing data types and instructions to the IA that exploit the parallelism in these applications. MMX technology extends the Intel architecture (IA) to improve the performance of multimedia, communications, and other numeric-intensive applications. It uses a SIMD (single-instruction, multiple-data) technique to exploit the parallelism inherent in many algorithms, producing full application performance of 1.5 to 2 times faster than the same applications run on the same processor without MMX. The extension also maintains full compatibility with existing IA microprocessors, operating systems, and applications while providing new instructions and data types that applications can use to achieve a higher level of performance on the host CPU.