3DNow!

3DNow! is an extension to the x86 instruction set developed by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). It adds single instruction multiple data (SIMD) instructions to the base x86 instruction set, enabling it to perform vector processing, which improves the performance of many graphic-intensive applications. The first microprocessor to implement 3DNow was the AMD K6-2, which was introduced in 1998. When the application was appropriate this raised the speed by about 2-4 times.

However, the instruction set never gained much popularity, and AMD announced on August 2010 that support for 3DNow would be dropped in future AMD processors, except for two instructions (the PREFETCH and PREFETCHW instructions).

History

3DNow was developed at a time when 3D graphics were becoming mainstream in PC multimedia and gaming software. Realtime display of 3D graphics depended heavily on the host CPU's floating-point unit (FPU) to perform floating-point calculations, a task in which AMD's K6 processor was easily outperformed by its competitor, the Intel Pentium II.