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Ken Shirriff

I made this diagram to show the different functional blocks on the Pentium P5 die.
5/5

The Pentium die with functional blocks labeled. The code cache and data cache are large blocks on the left. The integer datapath (the superscalar integer execution unit) is a vertical rectangle in the middle. The floating point unit is a vertical rectangle next to it. Instruction fetch and instruction decode are at the top, with branch prediction logic nearby along with the microcode ROM.
5 August at 18:50 | Open on oldbytes.space
2 comments
Tommy Thorn

@kenshirriff The Bus Interface Logic block seems shockingly large, half the area of either cache. What's going on?

5 August at 18:59 | Open on chaos.social
Ken Shirriff

@tommythorn In comparison, on the 8086, the Bus Interface Unit is roughly half the chip. The Bus Interface is doing a lot: performing prefetches, handling memory and I/O bus cycles, handling interrupts, bus hold, bus locking, cache operations, and so forth.

5 August at 19:05 | Open on oldbytes.space
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