Characterization of Alpha AXP performance using TP and SPEC workloads

Author

Cvetanovic, Zarka ; Bhandarkar, Dileep

Author_Institution

Digital Equipment Corp., Foxboro, MA, USA

fYear

1994

fDate

18-21 Apr 1994

Firstpage

60

Lastpage

70

Abstract

The characteristics of several commercial and technical workloads on the DEC 7000 AXP system are compared using built-in hardware monitors. The data analyzed include total instructions, cycles, multiple-issued instructions, stall components, cache misses, and instruction types. The data indicates that the two classes of workloads have vastly different characteristics and impose different requirements on the system design. Compared to VAX, Alpha AXP takes advantage of lower cycles per instruction and cycle time to achieve a significant performance advantage. The cache and memory interconnect subsystems are expected to play a crucial role in the performance of future systems. A simple model for evaluating the effects of various design tradeoffs based on the data collected by using hardware monitors is proposed

Keywords

DEC computers; buffer storage; performance evaluation; Alpha AXP; DEC 7000 AXP; SPEC workloads; TP workload; built-in hardware monitors; cache and memory interconnect; cache misses; cycles; industry-standard benchmarks; instruction types; multiple-issued instructions; performance; performance characteristics; stall components; total instructions; workloads; Buffer storage; CMOS technology; Counting circuits; Data analysis; Hardware; Performance analysis; Pipelines; Power system modeling; Read-write memory; Registers;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Computer Architecture, 1994., Proceedings the 21st Annual International Symposium on

Conference_Location

Chicago, IL

Print_ISBN

0-8186-5510-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ISCA.1994.288161

Filename

288161