pause指令

PAUSE—Spin Loop Hint
Description
Improves the performance of spin-wait loops. When executing a “spin-wait loop,” a Pentium 4
processor suffers a severe performance penalty when exiting the loop because it detects a
possible memory order violation. The PAUSE instruction provides a hint to the processor that
the code sequence is a spin-wait loop. The processor uses this hint to bypass the memory order
violation in most situations, which greatly improves processor performance. For this reason, it
is recommended that a PAUSE instruction be placed in all spin-wait loops.
提升 spin-wait loops(自旋锁循环等待)的性能。在执行一个 spin-wait loop 时，Pentium4 处理器会
遇到严重的性能损失.PAUSE 指令会向处理器提供一种提示：告诉处理器所执行的代码序列是一个 spin-wait loop。
处理器会根据这个提示而避开内存序列冲突(memory order violation)，也就是说对 spin-wait loop 不做缓存，不做指令
重新排序等动作。这样就可以大大的提高了处理器的性能。正是基于此，才建议在 spin-wait loops 中使用 pasuse 指令。
An additional function of the PAUSE instruction is to reduce the power consumed by a Pentium
4 processor while executing a spin loop. The Pentium 4 processor can execute a spin-wait loop
extremely quickly, causing the processor to consume a lot of power while it waits for the
resource it is spinning on to become available. Inserting a pause instruction in a spin-wait loop
greatly reduces the processor’s power consumption.
PAUSE指令的另外一个功能是让 Pentium4 处理器在执行 spin-wait loop 时可以减少电源的消耗。
在等待资源而执行自旋锁等待时，Pentium4 处理器以极快的速度执行自旋等待时，将会消耗很多电能，
但使用 pause 指令则可以极大的减少处理器的电能消耗。
This instruction was introduced in the Pentium 4 processors, but is backward compatible with
all IA-32 processors. In earlier IA-32 processors, the PAUSE instruction operates like a NOP
instruction.
PAUSE 指令在 Pentium4 处理器中引入，但它也是向前兼容的。在早先的 IA-32 处理器里，PAUSE 指令实际上就相当于 NOP 指令。
The Pentium 4 processor implements the PAUSE instruction as a pre-defined delay. The delay
is finite and can be zero for some processors. This instruction does not change the architectural
state of the processor (that is, it performs essentially a delaying no-op operation).
Pentium4 处理器以一种 预延迟(pre-defined delay)的技术来实现 PAUSE 指令。这种延迟也是有限度的，并且在一些处理器上是零延迟。该指令不会改变处理器的处理器的状态。