The AMD K6 architecture. The AMD K6 is a superscalar P5 Pentium-class microprocessor, manufactured by AMD, which superseded the K5. The AMD K6 is based on the Nx686 microprocessor that NexGen was designing when it was acquired by AMD.
AMD K6 – the K6 was not based on the K5 and was instead based on the Nx686 processor that was being designed by NexGen when that company was bought by AMD. The K6 was generally pin-compatible with the Intel Pentium (unlike NexGen's existing processors).
The AMD-K6 processor's RISC86 microarchitecture features a decoupled decode/execution superscalar design that provides enhanced sixth-generation performance and full x86 binary software compatibility.
The K6 microprocessor was launched by AMD in 1997. The main advantage of this particular microprocessor is that it was designed to fit into existing desktop designs for Pentium branded CPUs. It was marketed as a product which could perform as well as its Intel Pentium II equivalent but at a significantly lower price.
Using AMD’s RISC86 superscalar microarchitecture, the chip decoded each x86 instruction into a series of simpler operations that could then be processed using typical RISC principles – such as out-of-order execution, register renaming, branch …