The AMD Athlon processor includes three full x86 instruction
decoders. These decoders translate x86 instructions into
fixed-length MacroOPs for higher instruction throughput and
increased processing power. Instead of executing x86
instructions, which have lengths of 1 to 15 bytes, the
AMD Athlon processor executes the fixed-length MacroOPs,
while maintaining the instruction coding efficiencies found in
x86 programs