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Power for a better Internet experience.
The Intel® Pentium® III processor, available at 450MHz and 500MHz, is Intel's most advanced, most powerful processor for desktop PCs. The Pentium III processor offers the performance for the next generation of the Internet, as well as the quality, reliability and compatibility you expect from the world's leading microprocessor company.

Changing the way you experience the Web.
The Intel Pentium III processor can unleash the full multimedia capabilities of your PC, including full-screen, full-motion video, and realistic graphics for an enhanced, exciting Internet experience. Pentium III processors are ideal for avid PC users, gamers and serious Internet surfers.

Looking for more information?
See the features and specifications of the Pentium III processor for more technical information on the benefits and capabilities of the processor. The Pentium III processor general information page is a good place to start if you are a business user, IT manager, or developer looking for information on the benefits of the Pentium III processor.

Power for a better Internet experience.
Designed with the Internet in mind, the Intel® Pentium® III processor integrates the best attributes of Intel's latest processor platforms with new technology enabling advanced imaging, amazing 3D, streaming audio and video, and speech recognition applications. The Pentium III processor features 70 new instructions that can enhance your experience of exciting new Web sites and software. Some of these benefits include:

3D—the Pentium III processor enables higher polygon counts and advanced lighting effects, which can provide software and Web sites with more lifelike surfaces, more objects rendered in a given scene, and amazing shadow effects and reflections rendered in real time. This makes for more immersive gaming and entertainment experiences on your PC and more detail and convenience for online shopping.
500MHz and 450MHz Clock Speeds
70 New Instructions
Intel® Processor Serial Number
P6 Microarchitecture
100MHz System Bus
512K Level Two Cache
Intel® 440BX Chipset
Animation—the performance of the Pentium III processor enables software developers to incorporate a greater degree of realism and interactivity. Imagine flight simulators with wings that actually flex, driving simulations with suspension that actually works, or gaming characters with fingers that can touch and grasp.
Imaging—the Pentium III processor can provide better responsiveness with your graphics software by offering increased frame rates, color depths, and image processing algorithms. This means you can work with large, complex images and digital photographs without the wait.
Video—Because video files tend to be large, all the benefits of the Pentium III processor realized for still imaging are even more important for editing and viewing video. In addition, the performance capabilities of the processor allow for real-time MPEG 2 video encoding and editing and great performance for streaming video—resulting in higher quality video on the Internet.
Speech Recognition—the Pentium III processor can provide greater accuracy and faster response time in new applications that feature this exciting capability. With this performance advance, speech capabilities cross the threshold into real usability for real-time speech Web browsing or word processing

Overview

Emerging 3D applications that deliver new levels of realism to your PC are placing increasing demands on today's computing hardware.
Leading 3D graphics accelerators are becoming more and more advanced . . .Today's processors often can not keep pace . . .And a graphics bottleneck has developed in between . . .

Fortunately, there's 3DNow! technology.
AMD leads the way to better-than-ever 3D graphics and multimedia performance for mainstream PCs, with 3DNow!^(TM) technology -- an innovative enhancement to the x86 instruction set that breaks through 3D processing bottlenecks to enable a more productive, entertaining and realistic PC experience.

The Benefits

Leading-edge 3D performance
More realistic and lifelike 3D imaging and graphics
Big screen sound and video
Ultimate Internet experience

Why It's Important: The Problem
In recent years, 3D has come of age in the world of personal computing. According to Jon Peddie Associates (JPA), 3D is currently the fastest growing market segment in the PC industry and is expected to double in size in the next two years. While 3D gaming software has typically comprised the first wave of applications to incorporate leading edge visual effects, its development has sparked the demand for advanced multimedia technology in other PC application areas, including edutainment, business and personal productivity (word processing, spreadsheet modeling, presentation graphics), VRML and 3D on the Internet, photo image manipulation, soft DVD playback, voice recognition, and soft modems.

These exciting new 3D applications require powerful hardware support. However, today's processors are creating a bottleneck in the critical graphics pipeline. A processor that's bogged down in 3D modeling at the beginning of the graphics pipeline simply can't send the graphics accelerator at the other end enough data, fast enough. And as graphics accelerators get even better at rendering 3D images for a growing number of new 3D applications, the bottleneck at the processor will only get bigger.

How it Works: The Solution
By improving the processor's ability to handle floating-point calculations, 3DNow! technology closes the growing performance gap between processor and graphics accelerator performance -- and eliminates the bottleneck at the beginning of the graphics pipeline. This clears the way for dramatically improved 3D and multimedia performance.

Where It All Happens: The Graphics Pipeline

To understand the power of 3DNow! technology, it helps to understand just what goes on in the graphics pipeline, which consists of four stages.

Physics--The CPU performs floating-point-intensive physics calculations to create simulations of the real world and the objects in it.

Geometry -- Next, the CPU transforms mathematical representations of objects into three-dimensional representations, using floating point intensive 3D geometry.

Setup -- The CPU starts the process of creating the perspective required for a 3D view, and the graphics accelerator completes it.

Rendering -- Finally, the graphics accelerator applies realistic textures to computer-generated objects, using per-pixel calculations of color, shadow, and position.

Inside 3DNow! Technology

Technical Details

Instruction Set

21 instructions
Support for SIMD floating-point and integer operations
Specific SIMD integer instruction to enhance MPEG decoding
New PREFETCH instruction to eliminate extra data retrieval time
FEMMS (Fast Entry/Exit Multimedia State) instruction to reduce switching time between MMX^(TM) and x87 code
Open-standard support of IEEE 754 single precision data type

Processor Microarchitecture

Fully pipelined dual execution resources
Unlimited storage of floating-point numbers in memory
Execution of up to two 3DNow! instructions per clock
Total of four floating-point calculations (add, subtract, multiply) per clock (Enables potential peak performance of 1.2 Gigaflops at 300MHz vs. potential peak performance of 0.3 gigaflops for 300MHz processors without 3DNow! technology)
Common floating-point stack; eliminates task switching between AMD-3Dnow! and MMX operations

3DNow! technology -- MMX^(TM) Technology Relationship

Different technologies, yet with similar encoding and simultaneous instruction execution
MMX developed to improve integer-intensive operations in rendering such as 2D graphics
3DNow! technology developed to speed up floating-point-intensive front-end operations designed to boost 3D graphics and multimedia performance

Sample of Applications for 3DNow! technology

Arcade-quality 3D games
Edutainment software with 3D images
Web VRML and site development tools
Business document, presentation, and spreadsheet programs
CAD/CAE packages
3D audio processing
Speech recognition software
Soft modems
Soft DVD
Software drivers for 3D graphics controllers
MPEG2 video playback
Dolby AC-3 (digital surround-sound algorithm for DVD movies)

Benefits To Industry Developers, Retailers, and Consumers

What you get from 3DNow! technology if you're a...

Software Developer -- Access to an innovative, open technology that enables the development of leading-edge 3D and multimedia titles.

Hardware Developer -- A complementary solution that enhances the performance of 3D graphics accelerators in mainstream PC systems.

PC Reseller or OEM -- A processor capable of delivering more powerful 3D performance than Pentium1 II at a better system price point.

PC User -- Faster, more realistic 3D graphics applications, based on the latest technology and available at reasonable prices

Implementing 3DNow! Technology in Software Development

There are two levels at which you can implement 3DNow! technology in 3D software applications:

Directly through hard coding with optimized design tools
Indirectly by ensuring that your code supports APIs optimized for 3DNow! technology.

Hard Coding
AMD provides ISVs with complete development support for directly optimizing system code to take advantage of 3DNow! technology. Third-party development tools are also available to support the 3DNow! instruction set and data types.

AMD Software Development Kit

Assemblers, compilers, C++ macros, and other tools and utilities
Application notes, technical manuals, and other documentation
Software libraries with full source code

3DNow! Technology -- Optimized APIs
An alternative way developers can tap the power of 3DNow! is by ensuring that future applications support the latest API releases optimized for 3DNow! instructions. An API is a set of routines that an application program uses to request and carry out lower-level services performed by the computer's operating system. Developers can write code once for the API, which enables the program to run on anyone's hardware.

DirectX 6.0 -- The next generation of Microsoft's multimedia APIs, will feature a number of new leading-edge multimedia capabilities, including additional Direct 3D features and optimizations for 3DNow! technology. The DirectX 6.0 beta is available now, and Microsoft has announced the final version will be made available in July, 1998.

OpenGL -- An open, multi-platform alternative API for 3D graphics pioneered by Silicon Graphics is now being optimized for 3DNow! technology. Already an industry standard for high-end 3D workstations, OpenGL is becoming popular with many game developers. The OpenGL 1.2 SDK, which will include 3DNow! technology optimizations, is expected to be available in June, 1998.

Industry Support for an Emerging Standard
AMD pioneered 3DNow! technology in collaboration with key development partners -- including Microsoft, a host of other software makers, and many independent hardware vendors -- to benefit the entire industry.

Industry Involvement in Developing 3DNow! technology

Input from software industry leaders to define/optimize the technology
Leading ISVs have attended 3DNow! technology developer conferences held on three continents
Rapidly growing number of software developers writing code for 3DNow! technology today
Key hardware accelerator developers optimizing software drivers and other products to take advantage of 3DNow! technology

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