In a multicore CPU, does each core have access to it's own bank of XMM registers? For example if a chip is listed as having 16 XMM registers (XMM0-XMM15), is that 16 registers per core or 16 shared?
My understanding was that each core had its own register banks, and I would assume that the same goes for XMM registers, but I wasn't able to find a reference to back this assumption.
Yes, each core has its own registers.
It's worth noting that each core actually has on the order of a hundred physical registers; there are only 16 register names. This applies to both GPRs and XMM registers.