
Included in this zip file is MMXTest.exe. MMXTest.exe:
   1) detects what family of processor you have
      (8086, 286, 386, 486, pentium, pentium pro or pentium II )
   2) detects the presense or absense of MMX processing
   3) tests the MMX instruction set
   4) performs a rough benchmark of your MMX vs. normal compute.

To run MMXTest, just double-click on it. No installation is required.

MMXTest is freeware - you may copy and distribute the file MMXTest.Zip so long as you neither add, change, nor remove anything.

As MMXTest is free and has no user interface, it's not supported.

MMXTest has only a few possible results:

	1) your computer does not support the MMX instruction set.
		MMXTest will tell you so and quit.

	2) your computer supports MMX instructions, but has a flaw.
		MMXTest will notify you that one or more of its tests failed.

	3) your computer supports MMX instructions and they work.
		MMXTest will perform a rough benchmark and report results to you.



Currently, the following chips support the MMX instruction set:

	Intel Pentium / MMX
	Intel Pentium Pro / MMX
	Intel Pentium II / MMX
	AMD K6
	Cyrix 6x86MX
	IBM 6x86MX
	WinChip






About MMX Capability

"MMX" is widely believed to stand for "Multi-Media eXtensions". This is incorrect.
Intel has never said what the letters "MMX" stand for; magazine editors made the
multimedia stuff up. In fact, MMX originally stood for Matrix Multiplication,
but the Intel marketing guys decided MMX sounded better. This is why there is almost
no MMX software available - there are few software packages that multiply matrices.

Normal computers (486, old style Pentiums) actually have two separate
computers on the main chip: a 486 or Pentium, and a floating point computer 
which handles numbers. An MMX machine has effectively six computers on the chip: 
a Pentium, a floating point computer, and four parallel MMX computers. The MMX
computers are very  small, very limited computers: they have only a very few
instructions, and can only do very limited simple things.

On an MMX machine, we detect the MMX computer's presence when BrainMaker 
starts up, and we switch over our engine from calculating one thing at a time on
the Pentium to calculating four things at a time on the MMX computers.

Additionally, the MMX computers have a special instruction which multiplies 
and adds at the same time. We use this instruction to actually get more than
four things to happen at once. Also, MMX machines have improved caching, and
therefore run faster than normal Pentiums even for normal computing. 

MMX processors are a DSP engine (Digital Signal Processing), and have instructions
which are quite similar to the instructions on the TI 320C20 or AT&T DSP32. The MMX processors work with fixed point arithmetic and are designed to do parallel multiplies
and additions on packed arrays of fixed point numbers. For more detailed information,
see "Digital Signal Processing" by Rabiner and Gold.


MMXTest is a product of:
   California Scientific Software
   10024 Newtown Rd, Nevada City, CA 95959
   530-478-9040    530-478-9041(f)
   support@calsci.com
   www.calsci.com

March 18, 1998



