Vol. 1 2-7

INTEL

®

 64 AND IA-32 ARCHITECTURES

2.1.21 

The Third Generation Intel

® 

Core

™

 Processor Family (2012)

The Third Generation Intel Core processor family spans Intel Core i7, i5 and i3 processors based on the Ivy Bridge 
microarchitecture. The Intel Xeon processor E7-8800/4800/2800 v2 product families and Intel Xeon processor E3-
1200 v2 product family are also based on the Ivy Bridge microarchitecture.
The Intel Xeon processor E5-2400/1400 v2 product families are based on the Ivy Bridge-EP microarchitecture.
The Intel Xeon processor E5-4600/2600/1600 v2 product families are based on the Ivy Bridge-EP microarchitec-
ture and provide support for multiple sockets.

2.1.22 

The Fourth Generation Intel

® 

Core

™

 Processor Family (2013)

The Fourth Generation Intel Core processor family spans Intel Core i7, i5 and i3 processors based on the Haswell 
microarchitecture. Intel Xeon processor E3-1200 v3 product family is also based on the Haswell microarchitecture.

2.2 

MORE ON SPECIFIC ADVANCES

The following sections provide more information on major innovations.

2.2.1 

P6 Family Microarchitecture

The Pentium Pro processor introduced a new microarchitecture commonly referred to as P6 processor microarchi-
tecture. The P6 processor microarchitecture was later enhanced with an on-die, Level 2 cache, called Advanced 
Transfer Cache.
The microarchitecture is a three-way superscalar, pipelined architecture. Three-way superscalar means that by 
using parallel processing techniques, the processor is able on average to decode, dispatch, and complete execution 
of (retire) three instructions per clock cycle. To handle this level of instruction throughput, the P6 processor family 
uses a decoupled, 12-stage superpipeline that supports out-of-order instruction execution. 
Figure 2-1 shows a conceptual view of the P6 processor microarchitecture pipeline with the Advanced Transfer 
Cache enhancement.