Intel 253668-032US User Manual

Page of 806
19-20   Vol. 3
ARCHITECTURE COMPATIBILITY
FPUs handle all addressing and exception-pointer information, whether in protected 
mode or not.
19.18.7.15  FXAM Instruction
With the 32-bit x87 FPUs, if the FPU encounters an empty register when executing 
the FXAM instruction, it not generate combinations of C0 through C3 equal to 1101 or 
1111. The 16-bit IA-32 math coprocessors may generate these combinations, among 
others. This difference has no impact on existing software; it provides a performance 
upgrade to provide repeatable results.
19.18.7.16  FSAVE and FSTENV Instructions
With the 32-bit x87 FPUs, the address of a memory operand pointer stored by FSAVE 
or FSTENV is undefined if the previous floating-point instruction did not refer to 
memory
19.18.8 Transcendental 
Instructions
The floating-point results of the P6 family and Pentium processors for transcendental 
instructions in the core range may differ from the Intel486 processors by about 2 or 
3 ulps (see “Transcendental Instruction Accuracy” in Chapter 8, “Programming with 
the x87 FPU,” of
 thIntel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer’s Manual, 
Volume 1
). Condition code flag C1 of the status word may differ as a result. The exact 
threshold for underflow and overflow will vary by a few ulps. The P6 family and 
Pentium processors’ results will have a worst case error of less than 1 ulp when 
rounding to the nearest-even and less than 1.5 ulps when rounding in other modes. 
The transcendental instructions are guaranteed to be monotonic, with respect to the 
input operands, throughout the domain supported by the instruction.
Transcendental instructions may generate different results in the round-up flag (C1) 
on the 32-bit x87 FPUs. The round-up flag is undefined for these instructions on the 
16-bit IA-32 math coprocessors. This difference has no impact on existing software.
19.18.9 Obsolete 
Instructions
The 8087 math coprocessor instructions FENI and FDISI and the Intel 287 math 
coprocessor instruction FSETPM are treated as integer NOP instructions in the 32-bit 
x87 FPUs. If these opcodes are detected in the instruction stream, no specific opera-
tion is performed and no internal states are affected.