Superscalar processor

A superscalar processor (or multiple-issue processor) is a CPU that implements a form of parallelism called instruction-level parallelism within a single processor. In contrast to a scalar processor, which can execute at most one single instruction per clock cycle, a superscalar processor can execute or start executing more than one instruction during a clock cycle by simultaneously dispatching multiple instructions to different execution units on the processor. It therefore allows more throughput (the number of instructions that can be executed in a unit of time which can even be less than 1) than would otherwise be possible at a given clock rate. Each execution unit is not a separate processor (or a core if the processor is a multi-core processor), but an execution resource within a single CPU such as an arithmetic logic unit.

While a superscalar CPU is typically also pipelined, superscalar and pipelining execution are considered different performance enhancement techniques. The former (superscalar) executes multiple instructions in parallel by using multiple execution units, whereas the latter (pipeline) executes multiple instructions in the same execution unit in parallel by dividing the execution unit into different phases. In the "Simple superscalar pipeline" figure, fetching two instructions at the same time is superscaling, and fetching the next two before the first pair has been written back is pipelining.

The superscalar technique is traditionally associated with several identifying characteristics (within a given CPU):

Seymour Cray's CDC 6600 from 1964, while not capable of issuing multiple instructions per cycle, is often cited as an early influence to modern superscalar processors for its ability to execute instructions simultaneously through multiple functional units. The 1967 IBM System/360 Model 91, was another early influence that introduced out-of-order execution, pioneering use of Tomasulo's algorithm. The Intel i960CA (1989), the AMD 29000-series 29050 (1990), and the Motorola MC88110 (1991), microprocessors were the first commercial single-chip superscalar microprocessors. RISC microprocessors like these were the first to have superscalar execution, because RISC architectures free transistors and die area which can be used to include multiple execution units and the traditional uniformity of the instruction set favors superscalar dispatch (this was why RISC designs were faster than CISC designs through the 1980s and into the 1990s, and it's far more complicated to do multiple dispatch when instructions have variable bit length).

Except for CPUs used in low-power applications, embedded systems, and battery-powered devices, essentially all general-purpose CPUs developed since about 1998 are superscalar.

The P5 Pentium was the first superscalar x86 processor; the Nx586, P6 Pentium Pro and AMD K5 were among the first designs which decode x86-instructions asynchronously into dynamic microcode-like micro-op sequences prior to actual execution on a superscalar microarchitecture; this opened up for dynamic scheduling of buffered partial instructions and enabled more parallelism to be extracted compared to the more rigid methods used in the simpler P5 Pentium; it also simplified speculative execution and allowed higher clock frequencies compared to designs such as the advanced Cyrix 6x86.

The simplest processors are scalar processors. Each instruction executed by a scalar processor typically manipulates one or two data items at a time. By contrast, each instruction executed by a vector processor operates simultaneously on many data items. An analogy is the difference between scalar and vector arithmetic. A superscalar processor is a mixture of the two. Each instruction processes one data item, but there are multiple execution units within each CPU thus multiple instructions can be processing separate data items concurrently.

Superscalar CPU design emphasizes improving the instruction dispatcher accuracy and allowing it to keep the multiple execution units in use at all times. This has become increasingly important as the number of units has increased. While early superscalar CPUs would have two ALUs and a single FPU, a later design such as the PowerPC 970 includes four ALUs, two FPUs, and two SIMD units. If the dispatcher is ineffective at keeping all of these units fed with instructions, the performance of the system will be no better than that of a simpler, cheaper design.