COMPUTER ORGANIZATION AND DESIGN

5
Edition
th

The Hardware/Software Interface

Chapter 1
Computer Abstractions and
Technology
 §1.6 Performance
Defining Performance
 Which airplane has the best performance?
Boeing 777 Boeing 777

Boeing 747 Boeing 747

BAC/ Sud BAC/ Sud

Concorde Concorde
Douglas Douglas DC-
DC-8-50 8-50

0 100 200 300 400 500 0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000

Passenger Capacity Cruising Range (miles)

Boeing 777 Boeing 777

Boeing 747 Boeing 747

BAC/ Sud BAC/ Sud

Concorde Concorde
Douglas Douglas DC-
DC-8-50 8-50

0 500 1000 1500 0 100000 200000 300000 400000

Cruising Speed (mph) Passengers x mph

Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 2

Response Time and Throughput
 Response time
 How long it takes to do a task
 Throughput
 Total work done per unit time

e.g., tasks/transactions/… per hour
 How are response time and throughput affected
by
 Replacing the processor with a faster version?
 Adding more processors?
 We’ll focus on response time for now…

Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 3

Relative Performance
 Define Performance = 1/Execution Time
 “X is n times faster than Y”
Performanc e X Performanc e Y
Execution time Y Execution time X n
 Example: time taken to run a program
 10s on A, 15s on B
 Execution TimeB / Execution TimeA
= 15s / 10s = 1.5
 So A is 1.5 times faster than B
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 4
Measuring Execution Time
 Elapsed time
 Total response time, including all aspects

Processing, I/O, OS overhead, idle time
 Determines system performance
 CPU time
 Time spent processing a given job

Discounts I/O time, other jobs’ shares
 Comprises user CPU time and system CPU
time
 Different programs are affected differently by
CPU and system performance
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 5
 CPU Clocking
 Operation of digital hardware governed by a
constant-rate clock
Clock period

Clock (cycles)

Data transfer
and computation
Update state

• Clock cycle time/period (T):  Clock period: duration of a clock cycle

– time for a complete clock cycle 
– time between ticks e.g., 250ps = 0.25ns = 250×10 –12
s
– seconds per cycle  Clock frequency (rate): cycles per

• Clock rate/frequency (R): second

 e.g., 4.0GHz = 4000MHz =
– the inverse of the clock period, i.e.,
– cycles per second T 4.0×109Hz
R 1

Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 7

CPU Time

CPU Time CPU Clock Cycles Clock Cycle Time

CPU Clock Cycles

Clock Rate

 Performance improved by
 Reducing number of clock cycles
 Increasing clock rate

Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 8

 Our favorite program runs in 10 seconds on computer A,
which has a 2 GHz clock. We are trying to help a
computer designer build a computer, B, which will run
this program in 6 seconds. The designer has determined
that a substantial increase in the clock rate is possible,
but this increase will affect the rest of the CPU design,
causing computer B to require 1.2 times as many clock
cycles as computer A for this program. What clock rate
should we tell the designer to target?

 To run the program in 6 seconds, B must have twice the

clock rate of A.

Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 9

CPU Time Example
 Computer A: 2GHz clock, 10s CPU time
 Designing Computer B
 Aim for 6s CPU time
 Can do faster clock, but causes 1.2 × clock cycles
 How fast must Computer B clock be?
Clock CyclesB 1.2 Clock CyclesA
Clock RateB  
CPU Time B 6s
Clock CyclesA CPU Time A Clock Rate A
10s 2GHz 20 10 9
1.2 20 10 9 24 10 9
Clock RateB   4GHz
6s 6s
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 10
Instruction Count and CPI
Clock Cycles Instructio n Count Cycles per Instructio n
CPU Time Instructio n Count CPI Clock Cycle Time
Instructio n Count CPI

Clock Rate
 Instruction Count for a program
 Determined by program, ISA and compiler
 Average cycles per instruction
 Determined by CPU hardware
 If different instructions have different CPI

Average CPI affected by instruction mix

Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 11

 Suppose we have two implementations of
the same instruction set architecture.
 Computer A has a clock cycle time of 250
ps and a CPI of 2.0 for some program, and
computer B has a clock cycle time of 500
ps and a CPI of 1.2 for the same program.

 Which computer is faster for this program

and by how much?

Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 12

CPI Example
 Computer A: Cycle Time = 250ps, CPI = 2.0
 Computer B: Cycle Time = 500ps, CPI = 1.2
 Which is faster, and by how much?

CPU Time Instruction Count CPI Cycle Time

A A A
I 2.0 250ps I 500ps A is faster…
CPU Time Instruction Count CPI Cycle Time
B B B
I 1.2 500ps I 600ps
CPU Time
B I 600ps 1.2
…by this much
CPU Time I 500ps
A
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 13
 CPI in More Detail
 Different instructions take different amounts of time
depending on what they do:
 Multiplication takes more time than addition
 Floating-point operations take longer than integer ones
 Accessing memory takes more time than accessing
registers

 Instructions can be divided into classes of similar

instructions

 Instructions in the same class have the same Clock cycles

Per Instruction (CPI) value

Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 15

CPI in More Detail (cont.)
 Total CPU clock cycles for a certain program can be
calculated by looking at various instruction classes and
their individual CPIs

 If different instruction classes take different numbers of

cycles
n
Clock Cycles  (CPIi Instruction Count i )
i1

 – CPIi is the clock cycles per instruction for class i (integer

number),
 – Ci is the count of instructions executed from class i, and
 – n is the number of instruction classes
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 16
 CPI in More Detail
• Average CPI (CPIaverage or just CPI) for a certain program is the
average number of clock cycles each instruction takes to execute

Relative frequency
• C is the number of instructions executed by the program (known as
the
instruction count, instruction path length, or dynamic program size)

• let the fraction of occurrence (relative frequency) of an

instruction class in a program be
• Thus, CPI depends on the instruction mix (the dynamic
frequency of instructions across the program)
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 17
CPI Example
 Alternative compiled code sequences using
instructions in classes A, B, C

Class A B C
CPI for class 1 2 3
IC in sequence 1 2 1 2
IC in sequence 2 4 1 1

 Sequence 1: C = 5  Sequence 2: C = 6
 Clock Cycles  Clock Cycles
= 2×1 + 1×2 + 2×3 = 4×1 + 1×2 + 1×3
= 10 =9
 Avg. CPI = 10/5 = 2.0  Avg. CPI = 9/6 = 1.5
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 18
Instructions Per Clock Cycle
 CPI provides one way of comparing two different
implementations of the same ISA, since the number of
instructions executed for a program will be the same

 Although we might expect that the minimum CPI is 1.0,

some processors fetch and execute multiple instructions
per clock cycle (e.g., multicore microprocessors as will
be shown later)

 We could invert CPI to talk about IPC, or instructions

per clock cycle

Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 19

The CPU Performance Equation

Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 20

Performance Summary
The BIG Picture
Instructio ns Clock cycles Seconds
CPU Time   
Program Instructio n Clock cycle

Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 21