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Processor Performance and Benchmarking

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Essa Khan
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10 views2 pages

Processor Performance and Benchmarking

Uploaded by

Essa Khan
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Processor Performance and Benchmarking Questions

2.1 Techniques to Increase Processor Speed


Some techniques used in contemporary processors to enhance speed include:
- **Pipelining**: Breaks instructions into multiple stages, allowing several instructions to be
processed concurrently.
- **Superscalar Execution**: Allows multiple instructions to be executed simultaneously
using parallel pipelines.
- **Out-of-Order Execution**: Executes instructions as resources are available rather than in
the original sequence.
- **Speculative Execution**: Predicts the path of branches to execute instructions in
advance, improving efficiency.
- **Caching**: Increases data retrieval speed by storing frequently accessed data in memory
close to the CPU.

2.2 Performance Balance


Performance balance refers to maintaining an effective equilibrium between different
computer components' speeds and capacities. This balance ensures that no single
component, such as memory or I/O, bottlenecks the performance, allowing the processor
and system to operate at optimal levels.

2.3 Differences Among Multicore Systems, MICs, and GPGPUs


- **Multicore Systems**: Have multiple processing cores on a single chip, enabling parallel
task processing.
- **Many Integrated Cores (MICs)**: Feature a large number of simpler cores, optimized for
highly parallel tasks.
- **General-Purpose Graphics Processing Units (GPGPUs)**: Originally designed for
graphics, now used for parallel processing of non-graphical tasks; GPGPUs are optimized for
executing thousands of threads concurrently.

2.4 Amdahl's Law


Amdahl’s Law states that the speedup of a system is limited by the non-parallelizable
portion of the workload. Even if parts of a task can run in parallel, the presence of serial
sections limits the maximum achievable speedup.

2.5 Little's Law


Little’s Law is a formula that describes the relationship in queuing systems between the
average number of items in a system (L), the arrival rate (λ), and the average time an item
spends in the system (W): L = λ * W. This law helps predict system performance in areas
like computer networks and processing.
2.6 MIPS and FLOPS
- **MIPS (Million Instructions Per Second)**: Measures the execution speed by counting the
number of instructions a processor can execute per second.
- **FLOPS (Floating Point Operations Per Second)**: Measures computing performance,
particularly in scientific applications, by counting the number of floating-point calculations
per second.

2.7 Methods for Calculating Mean Values


- **Arithmetic Mean**: Sum of values divided by the count of values.
- **Geometric Mean**: The nth root of the product of n values, useful for comparing ratios.
- **Harmonic Mean**: Reciprocal of the average of the reciprocals of values, often used for
rates and ratios.

2.8 Desirable Characteristics of a Benchmark Program


A good benchmark program should:
- Be representative of real workloads.
- Be portable across systems.
- Have a well-defined, consistent measure of performance.
- Allow repeatability for reliable comparisons.
- Cover a range of system resources, providing a comprehensive performance assessment.

2.9 SPEC Benchmarks


SPEC (Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation) benchmarks are standardized tests
used to evaluate the performance of computer systems. They are widely recognized for
measuring CPU, memory, and I/O performance in real-world computing tasks.

2.10 Base Metric, Peak Metric, Speed Metric, and Rate Metric
- **Base Metric**: Represents the standard or minimum achievable performance without
system tuning.
- **Peak Metric**: Measures the best performance possible with optimizations.
- **Speed Metric**: Indicates the time taken to complete a task.
- **Rate Metric**: Measures the throughput or number of tasks completed in a given period.

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