Nehalem - Everything You Need to Know about Intel's New Architecture
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 3, 2008 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Improved Loop Stream Detection
Core 2 featured a Loop Stream Detector (LSD), the point of this logic was to detect when the CPU was executing a loop in software, stop predicting branches (and potentially incorrectly predicting the last branch of the loop) and simply stream instructions out of the LSD:
The traditional prediction pipeline
The LSD active on Penryn
The branch prediction and fetch hardware could be disabled and in current Core 2 CPUs you could hold up to 18 instructions in the LSD and simply stream them over and over again intro the decode engine until the loop was completed or you ran out of instructions in the LSD.
The LSD active on Nehalem
In Nehalem, the LSD is moved behind the decoder and now caches decoded micro-ops. If a loop is detected, the branch prediction, fetch and decode hardware can now all be powered down and the LSD can stream directly into the re-order buffer. Nehalem can cache 28 micro-ops in its LSD, which actually works out to more “instructions” than what Core 2 could do.
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defter - Friday, August 22, 2008 - link
Links are 20-bit wide, regardless of encoding or whether 1,2,8,16 or 20 bits are used to tranmist the data.I wonder who is flamebaiting here, a previous poster just mentioned the correct link width, he wasn't talking about "usable speed".
rbadger - Thursday, August 21, 2008 - link
"Each QPI link is bi-directional supporting 6.4 GT/s per link. Each link is 2-bytes wide..."This is actually incorrect. Each link is 20 bits wide, not 16 (2 bytes). This information is on the slide posted directly below the paragraph.
JarredWalton - Thursday, August 21, 2008 - link
It's 20-bits but using a standard 8/10 encoding mechanism, so of the 20 bits only 16 are used to transmit data and the other four bits are (I believe) for clock signaling and/or error correction. It's the same thing we see with SATA and HyperTransport.ltcommanderdata - Thursday, August 21, 2008 - link
Since the PCU has a firmware, I wonder if it will be updatable? It would be useful if lessons learn in the power management logic of later steppings and in Westmere can be brought back to all Nehalems through a firmware update for lower power consumption or even better performance with better Turbo mode application. Although a failed or corrupt firmware update on a CPU could be very problematic.wingless - Thursday, August 21, 2008 - link
I thought about this when I read about it the first time too. Flashing your CPU could kill the power management or the whole CPU in one fell swoop!