What is MMX?

MMX stands for Multimedia Extensions.

MMX is a technology designed to accelerate multimedia and communications applications. This acceleration and simplification is done through a set of multimedia instructions which are built into microprocessors to enable them to handle common multimedia operations like DSP, or Digital Signal Processing.

MMX works by taking certain operations, such as moving a pixel of graphics, which are usually processed as 8-bit integers, and instead packing a number of these pixels into one larger data unit. MMX then performs the requested operation on the larger data unit as a whole and writes the results in parallel, thus increasing performance of the operation.

Multimedia applications such as graphics, MPEG video, video games, image processing, and music files can all be enhanced by MMX technology.

MMX technology can only be used by software that is written specifically to call the MMX instructions. These applications are often referred to as MMX enabled.