intel / intel/SDM

[Feature]: Please document the CPUID leaves

Open
#16 1 comment 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub
enhancement
Dominant language
HTML
Stars
29
Forks
4
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

### Feature Description
The CPUID instruction is documented as a bare operation, most of which is un-useful to programmers. The SDM does document the leaves.

Maybe don't document it as part of the instruction, but instead provide a separate section of the CPUID fields.

Bonus: document for each ISA extension which CPU generation it was first present in.

### Why Is This Needed?
When programming software that needs to know whether a specific CPU feature is present or query a specific information about it (cache sizes, topology, XSAVE capabilities, etc.), one uses the CPUID instruction. But we need to know what input to use and which bit fields to check.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start by reviewing the existing CPUID instruction documentation and the corresponding SDM leaf descriptions. Decide how a separate CPUID-fields section fits the site, then track the requested input values and bit fields, with first CPU generations for ISA extensions where available. Done means the relevant leaves are documented and programmers can identify inputs and fields to query.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Active
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
45/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.