Computer Abstractions and Technology,

Performance: response time, throughput, CPU

performance equations; and The Power Wall
 §1.1 Introduction
The Computer Revolution
Progress in computer technology
 Underpinned by Moore’s Law
Makes novel applications feasible
 Computers in automobiles
 Cell phones
 Human genome project
 World Wide Web
 Search Engines
Computers are pervasive
 Classes of Computers
• Desktop computers
• General purpose, variety of software
• Subject to cost/performance tradeoff
• Server computers
• Network based
• High capacity, performance, reliability
• Range from small servers to building sized
• Embedded computers
• Hidden as components of systems
• Stringent power/performance/cost constraints
 §1.2 Below Your Program
Below Your Program

• Application software
• Written in high-level language
• System software
• Compiler: translates HLL code to machine code
• Operating System: service code
• Handling input/output
• Managing memory and storage
• Scheduling tasks & sharing resources
• Hardware
• Processor, memory, I/O controllers
 Levels of Program
Code

• High-level language
• Level of abstraction closer to
problem domain
• Provides for productivity and
portability
• Assembly language
• Textual representation of
instructions
• Hardware representation
• Binary digits (bits)
• Encoded instructions and data
 Benefits of high-level
languages
Allow programmers to think in natural language,
often specific to their intended use
 Fortran for scientific computations, Cobol for business,
LISP for symbol processing, etc
Increase productivity
 Fewer lines of code required
Allow programs to be independent of computer on
which they are developed
 portable; use of compilers
Under the cover
• Hardware performs same basic functions
across different types of computers
• input data
• output data
• process data
• store data
 §1.3 Under the Covers
The BIG Picture

Components of a Computer
• Same components for
all kinds of computer (Desktop, server,
embedded)
• input
• output
• memory
• datapath
• control
 Components of a Computer

• Input/output includes
• User-interface devices
• Display, keyboard, mouse
• Storage devices
• Hard disk, CD/DVD, flash
• Network adapters
• For communicating with other computers
 Anatomy of a Computer
Output
device

Network
cable

Input Input
device device
Anatomy of a desktop PC
 Inside the Processor (CPU)

• Datapath: performs operations on data

• Control: sequences datapath, memory, ...
• Cache memory
• Small fast SRAM memory for immediate access to
data
• Typically for CPU Cache
 Abstractions
Abstraction helps us deal with complexity
 Hide lower-level detail
Instruction set architecture (ISA)
 The hardware/software interface
Application Binary Interface
 The ISA plus system software interface
Implementation
 The details underlying and interface
 A Safe Place for Data

• Volatile main memory

• Loses instructions and data when power off

• Non-volatile secondary memory

• Magnetic disk
• Flash memory
• Optical disk (CDROM, DVD)
 Networks

• Communication and resource sharing

• Local area network (LAN): Ethernet
• Within a building

• Metropolitan Area Network (MAN)

• Within a city

• Wide area network (WAN)

• Covering wider geographical area (country, continent, and
beyond)

• Wireless network: WiFi, Bluetooth

 Technology Trends
• Electronics
technology continues
to evolve
• Increased capacity
and performance
• Reduced cost DRAM capacity

Year Technology Relative performance/cost

1951 Vacuum tube 1
1965 Transistor 35
1975 Integrated circuit (IC) 900
1995 Very large scale IC (VLSI) 2,400,000
2005 Ultra large scale IC 6,200,000,000
 Manufacturing ICs
The manufacturing of IC begins with silicon:
Silicon is a natural element which is a
semiconductor
With a special chemical process, materials
can be added to silicon and transform it to
one of three devices:
 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…
 Relative Performance

Define Performance = 1/Execution Time

“X is n time 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
 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
 Doesn’t include I/O time, other jobs’ shares
 Dividedinto user CPU time, time spent in the
program, and system CPU time, time spent in OS
performing tasks on behalf of the program.
 Differentprograms are affected differently by CPU and
system performance
 CPU Clocking
• Operation of digital hardware governed by a
constant-rate clock
Clock period

Clock (cycles)

Data transfer
and computation
Update state

 Clock period: duration of a clock cycle

 e.g., 250ps = 0.25ns = 250×10–12s
 Clock frequency (rate): cycles per second
 e.g., 4.0GHz = 4000MHz = 4.0×109Hz
Computer Organization & Design:The HW/SW Interface 5th Edition
Computer Organization & Design:The HW/SW Interface 5th Edition
 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
• Hardware designer must often trade off clock rate
against cycle count
 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 109
1.2 20 109 24 109
Clock RateB   4GHz
6s 6s
 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
(clock cycles per instruction)
 Average CPI affected by instruction mix
 CPI Example
Computer A: Cycle Time = 250ps, CPI = 2.0
Computer B: Cycle Time = 500ps, CPI = 1.2
Same ISA (instruction set architecture)
Which is faster, and by how much?
CPU Time Instructio n Count CPI Cycle Time
A A A
I 2.0 250ps I 500ps A is faster…

CPU Time Instructio n 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
 CPI in More Detail

• If different instruction classes take different

numbers of cycles
n
Clock Cycles  (CPIi Instructio n Counti )
i1

 Weighted average CPI

n
Clock Cycles  Instructio n Counti 
CPI    CPIi  
Instructio n Count i1  Instructio n Count 

Relative frequency
 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: IC = 5  Sequence 2: IC = 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
 Performance Summary

The BIG Picture

Instructio ns Clock cycles Seconds

CPU Time   
Program Instructio n Clock cycle

Performance depends on
Algorithm: affects IC, possibly CPI
Programming language: affects IC, CPI
Compiler: affects IC, CPI
Instruction set architecture: affects IC, CPI, T c
Computer Organization & Design:The HW/SW Interface 5th Edition
Computer Organization & Design:The HW/SW Interface 5th Edition
Computer Organization & Design:The HW/SW Interface 5th Edition
 Reducing Power

Suppose a new CPU has

85% of capacitive load of old CPU
15% voltage and 15% frequency reduction
Pnew Cold 0.85 (Vold 0.85) 2 Fold 0.85 4
 2
0.85 0.52
Pold Cold Vold Fold
 The power wall
 We can’t reduce voltage further

 We can’t remove more heat

 How else can we improve performance?

 Multiprocessors
Multicore microprocessors
 More than one processor per chip
Requires explicitly parallel programming
 Compare with instruction level parallelism
 Hardware executes multiple instructions at once
 Hidden from the programmer
 Hard to do
 Programming for performance
 Load balancing
 Optimizing communication and synchronization
 Concluding Remarks
•Cost/performance is improving
–Due to underlying technology development
•Hierarchical layers of abstraction
–In both hardware and software
•Instruction set architecture
–The hardware/software interface
•Execution time: the best performance measure
•Power is a limiting factor
–Use parallelism to improve performance