A method and apparatus for improving the operation of a computer processor by utilizing an asymmetric clustered processor architecture are disclosed. The asymmetric clustered processor apparatus includes a narrow cluster, a wide cluster, a steering logic utilizing a cluster predictor for providing a decoded instruction to either the narrow cluster or the wide cluster; address registers which are not part of the ISA, and a translation look-aside buffer for translating the virtual address of a load/store instruction in parallel with an execute stage. The method includes the steps of: predictably steering the instruction to either a W-bit Wide integer cluster or an N-bit Narrow integer cluster, managing the Address register file, and processing any instruction in the Wide integer cluster but processing only N-bit instructions in the Narrow integer cluster.