Benchmark characterization for experimental system evaluation

Ways of measuring benchmark characteristics independent of system design are presented. These benchmark characteristics include memory access behavior, control transfer behavior, and data dependencies. Measuring benchmark characteristics independently of the design parameters provides for cross-design and cross architecture comparisons using the same benchmark set. These characteristics also serve as the basis for interpreting benchmarking results. Instruction memory access behavior and control transfer behavior are extracted from real programs and presented to illustrate the usefulness of benchmark characterization