Gregory's Server
Modern processors cache megabytes of data so it can be accessed without waiting on slow memory. The 8088's prefetch queue held just 4 bytes, still enough for a substantial performance boost. When memory was idle, the 8088 would load upcoming instructions into the queue. 2/12
The queue was implemented with four registers, along with two hardware pointers indicating the next read position and the next write position. Here's how the queue looks with two bytes (blue) in the queue. 3/12