A number of widely used contemporary processors have instruction-set extensions for improved performance in multi-media applications. The aim is to allow operations to proceed on multiple pixels each clock cycle. Such instruction-sets have been incorporated both in specialist DSPchips such as the Texas C62xx (Texas Instruments, 1998) and in general purpose CPU chips like the Intel IA32 (Intel, 2000) or the AMD K6 (Advanced Micro Devices, 1999). These instruction-set extensions are typically based on the Single Instruc tion-stream Multiple Data-stream (SIMD) model in which a single instruction...

A number of widely used contemporary processors have instruction-set extensions for improved performance in multi-media applications. The aim is to allow operations to proceed on multiple pixels each clock cycle. Such instruction-sets have been incorporated both in specialist DSPchips such as the Texas C62xx (Texas Instruments, 1998) and in general purpose CPU chips like the Intel IA32 (Intel, 2000) or the AMD K6 (Advanced Micro Devices, 1999). These instruction-set extensions are typically based on the Single Instruc tion-stream Multiple Data-stream (SIMD) model in which a single instruction...