Unifying the Future: AMD Embraces Intel’s FRED Instructions

Future AMD processors based on the Zen 6 architecture will support Intel-developed FRED instructions. Currently, it seems that no CPUs on the market support these instructions. The essence of this lies in the fact that both companies are members of the x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group. The companies announced this kind of partnership back in 2023. It aims to provide a unified set of instructions for both manufacturers, which will make life easier for both developers and users.

When it comes to FRED, this is doubly important, as FRED is a complete replacement for the interrupt descriptor table (IDT) mechanism of the 80286 era, which is over 40 years old. Currently, the IDT is the standard way of handling system events, and this ancient solution will finally be discarded.

For Intel, FRED support will be in future Nova Lake processors. Support from already released Panther Lake is also reported, though it seems it will be activated at a later time. The practical result of implementing the new instruction set will be an increase in performance and a reduction in latency for workloads generating a large number of interrupts, such as network-intensive processes, high-refresh-rate gaming, and audio processing pipelines.

As Nova Lake is anticipated around 2024, its deployment alongside FRED set is highly awaited by developers aiming to capitalize on improved efficiencies. Panther Lake, while already available, offers intrigue with its undisclosed FRED capabilities, potentially set to unlock even higher performance metrics upon activation.