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COD Ch. 2 The Role of Performance

The document discusses computer performance and how it is measured. Performance is defined as the inverse of execution time, or the amount of work done per unit of time. Execution time depends on the number of clock cycles a program takes and the clock cycle time. Improving performance involves reducing clock cycles through optimizations like faster instructions or reducing cycle time by increasing clock rate. Amdahl's law shows how much overall performance improves based on how much a portion of a program is sped up. The key to performance is making common operations fast.

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40 views

COD Ch. 2 The Role of Performance

The document discusses computer performance and how it is measured. Performance is defined as the inverse of execution time, or the amount of work done per unit of time. Execution time depends on the number of clock cycles a program takes and the clock cycle time. Improving performance involves reducing clock cycles through optimizations like faster instructions or reducing cycle time by increasing clock rate. Amdahl's law shows how much overall performance improves based on how much a portion of a program is sped up. The key to performance is making common operations fast.

Uploaded by

sadia mirza
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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COD Ch.

2
The Role of Performance
Performance
 Performance is the key to understanding underlying motivation
for the hardware and its organization
 Measure, report, and summarize performance to enable users to
 make intelligent choices
 see through the marketing hype!

 Why is some hardware better than others for different programs?


 What factors of system performance are hardware related?
(e.g., do we need a new machine, or a new operating system?)
 How does the machine's instruction set affect performance?
What do we measure?
Define performance….
Airplane Passengers Range (mi) Speed (mph)

Boeing 737-100 101 630 598


Boeing 747 470 4150 610
BAC/Sud Concorde 132 4000 1350
Douglas DC-8-50 146 8720 544

 How much faster is the Concorde compared to the 747?


 How much bigger is the Boeing 747 than the Douglas DC-8?

 So which of these airplanes has the best performance?!


Computer Performance:
TIME, TIME, TIME!!!
 Response Time (elapsed time, latency):
 how long does it take for my job to run?
 how long does it take to execute (start to Individual user
finish) my job? concerns…

 how long must I wait for the database query?


 Throughput:
 how many jobs can the machine run at once?
Systems manager
 what is the average execution rate? concerns…
 how much work is getting done?

 If we upgrade a machine with a new processor what do we increase?


 If we add a new machine to the lab what do we increase?
Execution Time
 Elapsed Time
 counts everything (disk and memory accesses, waiting for I/O,
running other programs, etc.) from start to finish
 a useful number, but often not good for comparison purposes
elapsed time = CPU time + wait time (I/O, other programs, etc.)

 CPU time
 doesn't count waiting for I/O or time spent running other programs
 can be divided into user CPU time and system CPU time (OS calls)
CPU time = user CPU time + system CPU time
 elapsed time = user CPU time + system CPU time + wait time

 Our focus: user CPU time (CPU execution time or, simply,
execution time)
 time spent executing the lines of code that are in our program
Definition of Performance
 For some program running on machine X:

PerformanceX = 1 / Execution timeX

 X is n times faster than Y means:

PerformanceX / PerformanceY = n
Clock Cycles
 Instead of reporting execution time in seconds, we often use
cycles. In modern computers hardware events progress cycle by
cycle: in other words, each event, e.g., multiplication, addition,
etc., is a sequence of cycles
seconds cycles seconds
 
program program cycle
 Clock ticks indicate start and end of cycles:

cycle time
tick

tick

 cycle time = time between ticks = seconds per cycle


 clock rate (frequency) = cycles per second (1 Hz. = 1
cycle/sec, 1 MHz. = 106 cycles/sec)
1
 Example: A 200 Mhz. clock has a  10 9  5 nanoseconds
cycle time 200  10 6
Performance Equation I
seconds cycles seconds
 
program program cycle

equivalently

CPU execution time CPU clock cycles  Clock cycle time


=
for a program for a program

 So, to improve performance one can either:


 reduce the number of cycles for a program, or
 reduce the clock cycle time, or, equivalently,
 increase the clock rate
How many cycles are required
for a program?
 Could assume that # of cycles = # of instructions
2nd instruction
3rd instruction
1st instruction

4th
5th
6th
...
time

 This assumption is incorrect! Because:


 Different instructions take different amounts of time (cycles)
 Why…?
How many cycles are required
for a program?
time

 Multiplication takes more time than addition


 Floating point operations take longer than integer ones
 Accessing memory takes more time than accessing registers
 Important point: changing the cycle time often changes the
number of cycles required for various instructions.
Performance Equation II
CPU execution time Instruction count  average CPI  Clock cycle time
=
for a program for a program

 Derive the above equation from Performance Equation I


Amdahl's Law
 Execution Time After Improvement =
Execution Time Unaffected + ( Execution Time Affected / Rate of
Improvement )

Improved part of code


 Example:
 Suppose a program runs in 100 seconds on a machine, with
multiply responsible for 80 seconds of this time.
 How much do we have to improve the speed of multiplication if we want
the program to run 4 times faster?
 How about making it 5 times faster?

 Design Principle: Make the common case fast


Summary
 Performance is specific to a particular program
 total execution time is a consistent summary of performance
 For a given architecture performance increases come from:
 increases in clock rate (without adverse CPI affects)
 improvements in processor organization that lower CPI
 compiler enhancements that lower CPI and/or instruction count
 Pitfall: expecting improvement in one aspect of a machine’s
performance to affect the total performance
 You should not always believe everything you read! Read
carefully! See newspaper articles, e.g., Exercise 2.37!!

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