The Intel Pentium M processor is a high performance, low power mobile processor with several micro-architectural enhancements over existing Intel mobile processors.The Intel Pentium M processor is manufactured on Intel's advanced 0.13 micron process technology with copper interconnect. The processor maintains support for MMX technology and Internet Streaming SIMD instructions and full compatibility with IA-32 software. The high performance core features architectural innovations like Micro-op Fusion and Advanced Stack Management that reduce the number of micro-ops handled by the processor. This results in more efficient scheduling and better performance at lower power. The on-die 32-kB Level 1 instruction and data caches and the 1-MB Level 2 cache with Advanced Transfer Cache Architecture enable significant performance improvement over existing mobile processors. The processor also features a very advanced branch prediction architecture that significantly reduces the number of mispredicted branches. The processor's Data Prefetch Logic speculatively fetches data to the L2 cache before an L1 cache requests occurs, resulting in reduced bus cycle penalties and improved performance.
The Streaming SIMD Extensions 2 (SSE2) enable break-through levels of performance in multimedia applications including 3-D graphics, video decoding/encoding, and speech recognition. The new packed double-precision floating-point instructions enhance performance for applications that require greater range and precision, including scientific and engineering applications and advanced 3-D geometry techniques, such as ray tracing.
The Intel Pentium M processor's 400-MHz processor system bus utilizes a split-transaction, deferred reply protocol. The 400-MHz processor system bus uses Source-Synchronous Transfer (SST) of address and data to improve performance by transferring data four times per bus clock (4X data transfer rate, as in AGP 4X). Along with the 4X data bus, the address bus can deliver addresses two times per bus clock and is referred to as a "double-clocked" or 2X address bus. Working together, the 4X data bus and 2X address bus provide a data bus bandwidth of up to 3.2 Gbytes/second. The processor system bus uses Advanced Gunning Transceiver Logic (AGTL+) signal technology, a variant of GTL+ signaling technology with low power enhancements.
The processor features Enhanced Intel SpeedStep technology, which enables real-time dynamic switching between multiple voltage and frequency points instead of two points supported on previous versions of Intel SpeedStep technology. This results in optimal performance without compromising low power. The processor features the Auto Halt, Stop-Grant, Deep Sleep, and Deeper Sleep low power states.
