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Performs a serializing operation on all load-from-memory instructions that were issued prior the LFENCE instruction. This serializing operation guarantees that every load instruction that precedes in program order the LFENCE instruction is globally visible before any load instruction that follows the LFENCE instruction is globally visible. The LFENCE instruction is ordered with respect to load instructions, other LFENCE instructions, any MFENCE instructions, and any serializing instructions (such as the CPUID instruction). It is not ordered with respect to store instructions or the SFENCE instruction.
Weakly ordered memory types can be used to achieve higher processor performance through such techniques as out-of-order issue and speculative reads. The degree to which a consumer of data recognizes or knows that the data is weakly ordered varies among applications and may be unknown to the producer of this data. The LFENCE instruction provides a performance-efficient way of insuring load ordering between routines that produce weakly-ordered results and routines that consume that data.
It should be noted that processors are free to speculatively fetch and cache data from system memory regions that are assigned a memory-type that permits speculative reads (that is, the WB, WC, and WT memory types). The PREFETCHh instruction is considered a hint to this speculative behavior. Because this speculative fetching can occur at any time and is not tied to instruction execution, the LFENCE instruction is not ordered with respect to PREFETCHh instructions or any other speculative fetching mechanism (that is, data could be speculative loaded into the cache just before, during, or after the execution of an LFENCE instruction).
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