Lecture: Metrics, Benchmarks, Performance

• Topics: benchmark suites, summarizing performance,

performance equations

• HW1 due Wednesday 1:25pm (+ 1.5 day auto extension)

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Measuring Performance

• Two primary metrics: wall clock time (response time for a

program) and throughput (jobs performed in unit time)

• To optimize throughput, must ensure that there is minimal

waste of resources

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Benchmark Suites

• Performance is measured with benchmark suites: a

collection of programs that are likely relevant to the user

 SPEC CPU 2017: cpu-oriented programs (for desktops)

 SPECweb, TPC: throughput-oriented (for servers)
 EEMBC: for embedded processors/workloads

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Summarizing Performance

• Consider 25 programs from a benchmark set – how do

we capture the behavior of all 25 programs with a
single number?
P1 P2 P3
Sys-A 10 8 25
Sys-B 12 9 20
Sys-C 8 8 30

 Sum of execution times (AM)

 Sum of weighted execution times (AM)
 Geometric mean of execution times (GM)

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Sum of Weighted Exec Times – Example

• We fixed a reference machine X and ran 4 programs

A, B, C, D on it such that each program ran for 1 second

• The exact same workload (the four programs execute

the same number of instructions that they did on
machine X) is run on a new machine Y and the
execution times for each program are 0.8, 1.1, 0.5, 2

• With AM of normalized execution times, we can conclude

that Y is 1.1 times slower than X – perhaps, not for all
workloads, but definitely for one specific workload (where
all programs run on the ref-machine for an equal #cycles)
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GM Example

Computer-A Computer-B Computer-C

P1 1 sec 10 secs 20 secs
P2 1000 secs 100 secs 20 secs

Conclusion with GMs: (i) A=B

(ii) C is ~1.6 times faster

• For (i) to be true, P1 must occur 100 times for every

occurrence of P2

• With the above assumption, (ii) is no longer true

Hence, GM can lead to inconsistencies

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Problem 4

• Consider 3 programs from a benchmark set. Assume that

system-A is the reference machine. How does the
performance of system-B compare against that of
system-C (for all 3 metrics)?
P1 P2 P3
Sys-A 5 10 20
Sys-B 6 8 18
Sys-C 7 9 14

 Sum of execution times (AM)

 Sum of weighted execution times (AM)
 Geometric mean of execution times (GM)
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Problem 4

• Consider 3 programs from a benchmark set. Assume that

system-A is the reference machine. How does the
performance of system-B compare against that of
system-C (for all 3 metrics)?
P1 P2 P3 S.E.T S.W.E.T GM
Sys-A 5 10 20 35 3 10
Sys-B 6 8 18 32 2.9 9.5
Sys-C 7 9 14 30 3 9.6

 Relative to C, B provides a speedup of 1.03 (S.W.E.T)

or 1.01 (GM) or 0.94 (S.E.T)
 Relative to C, B reduces execution time by
3.3% (S.W.E.T) or 1% (GM) or -6.7% (S.E.T)
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Summarizing Performance

• GM: does not require a reference machine, but does

not predict performance very well
 So we multiplied execution times and determined
that sys-A is 1.2x faster…but on what workload?

• AM: does predict performance for a specific workload,

but that workload was determined by executing
programs on a reference machine
 Every year or so, the reference machine will have
to be updated

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Speedup Vs. Percentage

• “Speedup” is a ratio = old exec time / new exec time

• “Improvement”, “Increase”, “Decrease” usually refer to

percentage relative to the baseline
= (new perf – old perf) / old perf

• Note that performance is proportional to 1 / exectime

• A program ran in 100 seconds on my old laptop and in 70

seconds on my new laptop
 What is the speedup? (1/70) / (1/100) = 1.42
 What is the percentage increase in performance?
( 1/70 – 1/100 ) / (1/100) = 42%
 What is the reduction in execution time? 30% 10
CPU Performance Equation

• Clock cycle time = 1 / clock speed

• CPU time = clock cycle time x cycles per instruction x

number of instructions

• Influencing factors for each:

 clock cycle time: technology and pipeline
 CPI: architecture and instruction set design
 instruction count: instruction set design and compiler

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Problem 5

• My new laptop has an IPC that is 20% worse than my old

laptop. It has a clock speed that is 30% higher than the old
laptop. I’m running the same binaries on both machines.
What speedup is my new laptop providing?

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Problem 5

• My new laptop has an IPC that is 20% worse than my old

laptop. It has a clock speed that is 30% higher than the old
laptop. I’m running the same binaries on both machines.
What speedup is my new laptop providing?

Exec time = cycle time * CPI * instrs

Perf = clock speed * IPC / instrs
Speedup = new perf / old perf
= new clock speed * new IPC / old clock speed * old IPC
= 1.3 * 0.8 = 1.04

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An Alternative Perspective - I

• Each program is assumed to run for an equal number

of cycles, so we’re fair to each program

• The number of instructions executed per cycle is a

measure of how well a program is doing on a system

• The appropriate summary measure is sum of IPCs or

AM of IPCs = 1.2 instr + 1.8 instr + 0.5 instr
cyc cyc cyc

• This measure implicitly assumes that 1 instr in prog-A

has the same importance as 1 instr in prog-B
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An Alternative Perspective - II

• Each program is assumed to run for an equal number

of instructions, so we’re fair to each program

• The number of cycles required per instruction is a

measure of how well a program is doing on a system

• The appropriate summary measure is sum of CPIs or

AM of CPIs = 0.8 cyc + 0.6 cyc + 2.0 cyc
instr instr instr

• This measure implicitly assumes that 1 instr in prog-A

has the same importance as 1 instr in prog-B
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AM and HM

• Note that AM of IPCs = 1 / HM of CPIs and

AM of CPIs = 1 / HM of IPCs

• So if the programs in a benchmark suite are weighted

such that each runs for an equal number of cycles, then
AM of IPCs or HM of CPIs are both appropriate measures

• If the programs in a benchmark suite are weighted such

that each runs for an equal number of instructions, then
AM of CPIs or HM of IPCs are both appropriate measures

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AM vs. GM

• GM of IPCs = 1 / GM of CPIs

• AM of IPCs represents thruput for a workload where each

program runs sequentially for 1 cycle each; but high-IPC
programs contribute more to the AM

• GM of IPCs does not represent run-time for any real

workload (what does it mean to multiply instructions?); but
every program’s IPC contributes equally to the final measure

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Problem 6

• My new laptop has a clock speed that is 30% higher than

the old laptop. I’m running the same binaries on both
machines. Their IPCs are listed below. I run the binaries
such that each binary gets an equal share of CPU time.
What speedup is my new laptop providing?
P1 P2 P3
Old-IPC 1.2 1.6 2.0
New-IPC 1.6 1.6 1.6

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Problem 6

• My new laptop has a clock speed that is 30% higher than

the old laptop. I’m running the same binaries on both
machines. Their IPCs are listed below. I run the binaries
such that each binary gets an equal share of CPU time.
What speedup is my new laptop providing?
P1 P2 P3 AM GM
Old-IPC 1.2 1.6 2.0 1.6 1.57
New-IPC 1.6 1.6 1.6 1.6 1.6

AM of IPCs is the right measure.

Speedup with AM would be 1.3.

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Performance Metrics Summary

• Performance summaries: AM of weighted exec times, GM

• AM of IPCs, HM of IPCs (AM of CPIs), GM of IPCs

• Speedup (ratio), performance improvement (ratio – 1)

• CPU time = cycle time x CPI x #instructions

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