IA-32 implementation
NexGen Nx686




General Details Name Nx686
Codename HA
Family/Generation 80386, 6th Generation
Vendor NexGen
Manufacturer IBM
First Introduction Oct 10, 1995 (samples)
Apr 2, 1997 (as AMD K6)
Physical Details Package Type 463 Pin PGA
Package Size 5.00 cm x 5.00 cm
Socket or Slot Proprietary Socket
Transistors 6,000,000 (includes 54 KB L1 Cache)
Process Technology 5M, 0.44 µm, CMOS (samples)
5M, 0.35 µm, CMOS (target)
Die Size ~180 mm² (0.44 µm)
Electrical Details Split Voltage Yes
Core Voltage 2.5 V
I/O Voltage 3.3 V
Typical Power ~4 W
Maximum Power ~10 W
Cooling Required
Clock Frequencies CPU Core Speed 180 MHz (samples)
L1 Cache Speed 2.0x Core Speed
L2 Cache Speed 1.0x Core or External Bus Speed
External Bus Speed 60 MHz (samples)
Core/Bus Ratio 3.0x
Miscellaneous usual Motherboard Single Processor NexGen PCI
usual Chipset NexGen NxPCI
Pictures Nx686 Top (75 KB JPG) and Bottom (142 KB JPG)
Nx686 Top (77 KB JPG) and Bottom (145 KB JPG)
Processor Core Generic Details RISC, Out-of-order and Speculative Execution
Specific Details 24 Entry ICU (up to 12 IA-32 instructions)
Registers 32 Bit Integer, 80 Bit FP, ??? Bit MM, 48 Entry RAT
Pipeline Depth 6
Instruction Decoder 1-2x IA-32/Cycle
1-4x ROPs/Cycle
Execution Units Simple ALU, Complex ALU, MM, Load, Store, Branch, Non-pipelined FPU
Execution Speed up to 6x ROPs/Cycle
Processor Buses Address Bus Width 32 Bit
Data Bus Width 64 Bit, separate 64 Bit Backside L2 Cache Bus
Physical Memory 2^32 Bit = 4 GB
Virtual Memory 2^32 Bit = 4 GB
Logical Memory (8,190 + 8,192) x 4 GB = 65,528 GB (~64 TB)
Multiprocessing N/A
Power Management HLT, STPCLK, SMI/NexGen SMM
Processor Caches Level 0 N/A
Level 1 Code 16 KB, 2-Way, 32 Byte/Line, SI,
3 Pre-decode Bits/Byte (adds 6 KB), LRU
Data 32 KB, 2-Way, 32 Byte/Line, MESI,
Dual-ported, LRU
Level 2 Unified On-chip Controller for 256 KB ... 2 MB, WB,
Direct Mapped, 32 Byte/Line, Single-ported,
MESI, Separate SRAMs for Data and Tags
Processor Buffers Read Buffer ???
Write Buffer ???
Prefetch Queue ???
Branch Prediction Static Yes
Dynamic 8,192 Entries, 2-Level
BTC 16 Entries, 16 Byte/Entry
RSB 16 Entries, ??? Byte/Entry
TLB Code 64 Entries, ???, LRU
Data 128 Entries, ???, LRU
Instruction Set Regular IA-32
Floating Point Integrated
Multi Media MM
Processor Modes Real, Protected, Virtual, Paging, SMM

Note: The NexGen Nx686 processor never made it beyond sampling. After its announcement at the 1995 Microprocessor forum, AMD aquired NexGen, and turned the Nx686 design into what is now known as the AMD K6 processor. The information above is based on articles which discussed the NexGen Nx686 design, and on AMD K6 processor details.



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