1. An apparatus comprising: a coprocessor interface unit to identify an instruction of a first instruction format for a saturating operation, a first source having a first plurality of packed data elements and a second source having a second plurality of packed data elements; an execution unit to perform the saturating operation on the first plurality of packed data elements and the second plurality of packed data elements; a register to store a plurality of saturation flags to indicate if a result of the saturating operation saturated, where the coprocessor interface unit identifies a saturation history processing instruction of a second instruction format identifying a processing operation for the saturation flags, and a saturation data size; a saturation history processing unit to determine an operand based on the saturation data size, and perform the saturation history processing operation on the saturation flags and the operand for the saturation data size from the saturation flags; and a status register having a condition code flags set to store the result of the processing function.