Performance counters and development of SPEC CPU2006

ABSTRACT

Performance counters provide the means to track detailed events that occur on a CPU chip. These events are of interest to both performance analysts and compiler developers. Counting them provides essential clues to guide performance improvement. For example, a tester who sees that a program has a high cache miss rate on a particular system may experiment with compilation options that improve prefetching. A compiler developer who sees the same thing may realize that the code generator's machine model is missing some crucial detail of behavior on that particular system.

REFERENCES

• 1: http://www.spec.org/spec/glossary/#integer
• 2: http://cooltools.sunsource.net/spot/
• 3: Aashish Phansalkar , Ajay Joshi , Lizy K. John, Subsetting the SPEC CPU2006 benchmark suite, ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News, v.35 n.1, March 2007 [doi>10.1145/1241601.1241616]
• 4: See the two result submissions for the Sun Blade 2000 at www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2006q3
• 5: The manpage for cputrack is available under User Commands at http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/coll/40.10
• 6: UltraSPARC III Cu User's Manual, Version 2.2.1, January 2004, Chapter 14.
• 7: John L. Henning, SPEC CPU suite growth: an historical perspective, ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News, v.35 n.1, March 2007 [doi>10.1145/1241601.1241615]
• 8: Reinhold P. Weicker , John L. Henning, Subroutine profiling results for the CPU2006 benchmarks, ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News, v.35 n.1, March 2007 [doi>10.1145/1241601.1241621]
• 9: Darryl Gove, CPU2006 working set size, ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News, v.35 n.1, March 2007 [doi>10.1145/1241601.1241619]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.1 PROCESSOR ARCHITECTURES
      C.1.4 Parallel Architectures

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.4 PERFORMANCE OF SYSTEMS

  K. Computing Milieux
  K.6 MANAGEMENT OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
      K.6.2 Installation Management
          Subjects: Benchmarks

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Measurement, Performance