Abstract

Gathering detailed measurements of the execution behavior of an instruction set architecture is difficult. There are two major problems that must be solved. First, for meaningful measurements to be obtained, programs that represent typical work load and instruction mixes must be used. This means that high-level language compilers for the target architecture are required. This problem is further compounded as most architectures require an optimizing compiler to exploit their capabilities. Building such a compiler can be a formidable task. The second problem is that gathering detailed dynamic measurements of an architecture using typical user programs reading typical data sets can consume significant computation resources. For example, a popular way to gather execution measurements is to simulate the architecture. This technique is often used when the architecture in question does not yet exist,

Citations