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Computer Performance Measurement. Amdahl's Law

This document discusses measuring computer performance and Amdahl's law. It defines key terms like execution time, CPU time, clock cycles, and clock rate used to measure performance. Amdahl's law states that the maximum speedup from parallelizing a program is limited by the time needed for the sequential parts of the program. The more of a program that can be parallelized, the greater the potential speedup, but increasing processors yields diminishing returns as the sequential part remains.

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Naski Kuafni
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48 views

Computer Performance Measurement. Amdahl's Law

This document discusses measuring computer performance and Amdahl's law. It defines key terms like execution time, CPU time, clock cycles, and clock rate used to measure performance. Amdahl's law states that the maximum speedup from parallelizing a program is limited by the time needed for the sequential parts of the program. The more of a program that can be parallelized, the greater the potential speedup, but increasing processors yields diminishing returns as the sequential part remains.

Uploaded by

Naski Kuafni
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Computer

performance
measurement.
Amdahl’s Law.
Outline
• Characterizing performance
• Performance and speed
• Basic terminology for measuring
• Performance and Execution Time
Characterizing Performance
• Not always obvious how to characterize
performance:
– motor cars
– football teams
– tennis players
– computers?
• Can lead to serious errors
– improve the processor to improve speed?
Performance and Speed
• Performance for a program on a particular
machine
1
– P e r fo r m a n c e ( X ) =
E x e c u tio n ( X )
P e r fo r m a n c e ( X ) E x e c u tio n (Y )
= = n
P e r fo r m a n c e (Y ) E x e c u tio n ( X )

– X is n times faster than Y


Measuring Time
• Execution time is the amount of time it takes
the program to execute in seconds.
• Time (computers do several tasks!)
– elapsed time based on a normal clock;
– CPU time is time spent executing this program
• excluding waiting for I/O, or other programs
Execution Time

Elapsed Time
(real time)

CPU time for this program I/O waiting


& other programs

Example (UNIX)
11.099u 8.659s 10:43.67 3.0%
(user) (system) (elapsed)
user system (seconds) (seconds) (min:secs)
(direct) (time in OS) CPU time = 3.0% of elapsed time
Measuring Amounts

• 1 bit
• 8 bits = 1 byte
• 1024bytes = 1 kilobyte = 1KByte = 1K = 210
• 1024KBytes = 1 megabyte = 1MB = 220
• 1024MB = 1 gigabyte = 1GB = 230
• 1024GB = 1 terabyte = 240
• and on to infinity
Intel or AMD ?
Measuring Times
• Duration
– 1 second
– 1/1000 second = 1 millisec = 1ms = 10-3 s
– 1/1,000,000 s = 1 microsec = 10-6 s
– 1/1,000,000,000s = 1 nanosec = 10-9 s
• Frequency
– 1 Hertz = 1 cycle per second
– 1 MHz = 1,000,000 cycles per sec
– 100MHz = 100,000,000 cycles per sec.
The type of processor a computer has not only affects
its overall performance, but it can also dictate what
type of software it uses.
Differences
32-bit and 64-bit

• number of calculations per second


• on the amount of RAM
– 32-bit computers maximum of 3-4GB
– 64-bit computer over 4 GB.
• The first smartphone with a 64-bit chip (Apple
A7) was the iPhone 5s.
Computer Clock Times
• Computers run according to a clock that runs
at a steady rate
• The time interval is called a clock cycle (eg,
10ns).
• The clock rate is the reciprocal of clock cycle -
a frequency, how many cycles per sec (eg,
100MHz).
– 10 ns = 1/100,000,000 (clock cycle), same as:-
– 1/10ns = 100,000,000 = 100MHz (clock rate).
Purchasing Decision
• Computer A has a 100MHz processor
• Computer B has a 300MHz processor
• So, B is faster, right?

NOPE!
• Now, let’s get it right…..
Measuring Performance

• The only important question: “HOW FAST


WILL MY PROGRAM RUN?”
• CPU execution time for a program
– = CPU clock cycles * cycle time
– (= CPU clock cycles / Clock rate)
• In computer design, trade-off between:
– clock cycle time, and
– number of cycles required for a program
Cycles Per Instruction
• The execution time of a program clearly must
depend on the number of instructions
– but different instructions take different times
• An expression that includes this is:-
– CPU clock cycles = N * CPI
• N = number of instructions
• CPI = average clock cycles per instruction
Example
• Machine A • Machine B
• clock cycle time • clock cycle time
– 10ns/cycle – 30ns/cycle
• CPI = 2.0 for prog X • CPI = 1.0 for prog X

Let I = number of instructions in the program.

CPU clock cycles (A) = I * 2.0 CPU clock cycles (B) = I * 1.0
CPU time (A) = CPU clock cycles * CPU time (B) = CPU clock cycles *
clock cycle time clock cycle time
= I * 2.0 * 10 = I * 1.0 * 30
= I * 20 ns = I * 30 ns

Execution(B) / Execution(A) = 30 / 20 = 1.5


Basic Performance Equation
• CPU Time = I * CPI * T
– I = number of instructions in program
– CPI = average cycles per instruction
– T = clock cycle time
• CPU Time = I * CPI / R
– R = 1/T the clock rate
• T or R are usually published as performance measures for a processor
• I requires special profiling software
• CPI depends on many factors (including memory).
Amdahl’s law
Amdahl’s Law
• Amdahl's law, named after computer architect
Gene Amdahl, is used to find the maximum
expected improvement to an overall system
when only part of the system is improved.
• Amdahl’s law can be interpreted more
technically, but in simplest terms it means that
it is the algorithm that decides the speedup
not the number of processors.
Amdahl’s Law
• A program (or algorithm) which can be
parallelized can be split up into two parts:
– A part which cannot be parallelized
– A part which can be parallelized
Introduction
• If F is the fraction of a program that is
sequential, and (1-F) is the fraction of program
or algorithm that can be parallelized, then the
maximum speed-up that can be achieved by
using P processors is:
Examples
• If 90% of a calculation can be parallelized (i.e.
10% is sequential) then the maximum speed-
up which can be achieved on 5 processors is
1/(0.1+(1-0.1)/5) or roughly 3.6 (i.e. the
program can theoretically run 3.6 times faster
on five processors than on one)
Examples
• If 90% of a calculation can be parallelized then the
maximum speed-up on 10 processors is 1/(0.1+(1-
0.1)/10) or 5.3 (i.e. investing twice as much
hardware speeds the calculation up by about
50%).
• If 90% of a calculation can be parallelized then the
maximum speed-up on 20 processors is 1/(0.1+(1-
0.1)/20) or 6.9 (i.e. doubling the hardware again
speeds up the calculation by only 30%).
Examples
• If 90% of a calculation can be parallelized then
the maximum speed-up on 1000 processors is
1/(0.1+(1-0.1)/1000) or 9.9 (i.e. throwing an
absurd amount of hardware at the calculation
results in a maximum theoretical (i.e. actual
results will be worse) speed-up of 9.9 vs a
single processor).

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