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You might think that the elimination of the 8-bit bus cycle-eater would mean that the prefetch queue cycle-eater would also vanish, since on the 8088 the prefetch queue cycle-eater is a side effect of the 8-bit bus. That would seem all the more likely given that both the 286 and the 386 have larger prefetch queues than the 8088 (6 bytes for the 286, 16 bytes for the 386) and can perform memory accesses, including instruction fetches, in far fewer cycles than the 8088.

However, the prefetch queue cycle-eater doesn’t vanish on either the 286 or the 386, for several reasons. For one thing, branching instructions still empty the prefetch queue, so instruction fetching still slows things down after most branches; when the prefetch queue is empty, it doesn’t much matter how big it is. (Even apart from emptying the prefetch queue, branches aren’t particularly fast on the 286 or the 386, at a minimum of seven-plus cycles apiece. Avoid branching whenever possible.)

After a branch it does matter how fast the queue can refill, and there we come to the second reason the prefetch queue cycle-eater lives on: The 286 and 386 are so fast that sometimes the Execution Unit can execute instructions faster than they can be fetched, even though instruction fetching is much faster on the 286 and 386 than on the 8088.

(All other things being equal, too-slow instruction fetching is more of a problem on the 286 than on the 386, since the 386 fetches 4 instruction bytes at a time versus the 2 instruction bytes fetched per memory access by the 286. However, the 386 also typically runs at least twice as fast as the 286, meaning that the 386 can easily execute instructions faster than they can be fetched unless very high-speed memory is used.)

The most significant reason that the prefetch queue cycle-eater not only survives but prospers on the 286 and 386, however, lies in the various memory architectures used in computers built around the 286 and 386. Due to the memory architectures, the 8-bit bus cycle-eater is replaced by a new form of the wait state cycle-eater: wait states on accesses to normal system memory.

#### System Wait States

The 286 and 386 were designed to lose relatively little performance to the prefetch queue cycle-eater...when used with zero-wait-state memory: memory that can complete memory accesses so rapidly that no wait states are needed. However, true zero-wait-state memory is almost never used with those processors. Why? Because memory that can keep up with a 286 is fairly expensive, and memory that can keep up with a 386 is very expensive. Instead, computer designers use alternative memory architectures that offer more performance for the dollar—but less performance overall—than zero-wait-state memory. (It is possible to build zero-wait-state systems for the 286 and 386; it’s just so expensive that it’s rarely done.)

The IBM AT and true compatibles use one-wait-state memory (some AT clones use zero-wait-state memory, but such clones are less common than one-wait-state AT clones). The 386 systems use a wide variety of memory systems—including high-speed caches, interleaved memory, and static-column RAM—that insert anywhere from 0 to about 5 wait states (and many more if 8 or 16-bit memory expansion cards are used); the exact number of wait states inserted at any given time depends on the interaction between the code being executed and the memory system it’s running on.

| The performance of most 386 memory systems can vary greatly from one memory access to another, depending on factors such as what data happens to be in the cache and which interleaved bank and/or RAM column was accessed last.

The many memory systems in use make it impossible for us to optimize for 286/386 computers with the precision that’s possible on the 8088. Instead, we must write code that runs reasonably well under the varying conditions found in the 286/386 arena.

The wait states that occur on most accesses to system memory in 286 and 386 computers mean that nearly every access to system memory—memory in the DOS’s normal 640K memory area—is slowed down. (Accesses in computers with high-speed caches may be wait-state-free if the desired data is already in the cache, but will certainly encounter wait states if the data isn’t cached; this phenomenon produces highly variable instruction execution times.) While this is our first encounter with system memory wait states, we have run into a wait-state cycle-eater before: the display adapter cycle-eater, which we discussed along with the other 8088 cycle-eaters way back in Chapter 4. System memory generally has fewer wait states per access than display memory. However, system memory is also accessed far more often than display memory, so system memory wait states hurt plenty—and the place they hurt most is instruction fetching.

Consider this: The 286 can store an immediate value to memory, as in MOV [WordVar],0, in just 3 cycles. However, that instruction is 6 bytes long. The 286 is capable of fetching 1 word every 2 cycles; however, the one-wait-state architecture of the AT stretches that to 3 cycles. Consequently, nine cycles are needed to fetch the six instruction bytes. On top of that, 3 cycles are needed to write to memory, bringing the total memory access time to 12 cycles. On balance, memory access time—especially instruction prefetching—greatly exceeds execution time, to the extent that this particular instruction can take up to four times as long to run as it does to execute in the Execution Unit.

And that, my friend, is unmistakably the prefetch queue cycle-eater. I might add that the prefetch queue cycle-eater is in rare good form in the above example: A 4-to-1 ratio of instruction fetch time to execution time is in a class with the best (or worst!) that’s found on the 8088.

Let’s check out the prefetch queue cycle-eater in action. Listing 11.1 times MOV [WordVar],0. The Zen timer reports that on a one-wait-state 10 MHz 286-based AT clone (the computer used for all tests in this chapter), Listing 11.1 runs in 1.27 µs per instruction. That’s 12.7 cycles per instruction, just as we calculated. (That extra seven-tenths of a cycle comes from DRAM refresh, which we’ll get to shortly.)

LISTING 11.1 L11-1.ASM

    ;
    ; *** Listing 11.1 ***
    ;
    ; Measures the performance of an immediate move to
    ; memory, in order to demonstrate that the prefetch
    ; queue cycle-eater is alive and well on the AT.
    ;
            jmp     Skip
    ;
            even            ;always make sure word-sized memory
                            ; variables are word-aligned!
    WordVar dw      0
    ;
    Skip:
            call    ZTimerOn
            rept    1000
            mov     [WordVar],0
            endm
            call    ZTimerOff

What does this mean? It means that, practically speaking, the 286 as used in the AT doesn’t have a 16-bit bus. From a performance perspective, the 286 in an AT has two-thirds of a 16-bit bus (a 10.7-bit bus?), since every bus access on an AT takes 50 percent longer than it should. A 286 running at 10 MHz should be able to access memory at a maximum rate of 1 word every 200 ns; in a 10 MHz AT, however, that rate is reduced to 1 word every 300 ns by the one-wait-state memory.

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Graphics Programming Black Book © 2001 Michael Abrash