Lab 2 - Performance and Benchmarks
Due: Wednesday at noon
Part 1 - Performance
In class, we discussed two ways the cycles per instruction (CPI) for classes
of instructions could be used for comparing performance: the same program
compiled with different compilers and the same program ran on different CPUs.
In class, an example was given for the first use. For this part of the lab,
we will explore the second use.
We will look at four classes of instructions on two machines: machine 1 and
machine 2. The program has the same instruction count per class on both
machines (in the real world, this is not always the case, but this makes the
evaluation easier). Given the following data, calculate the clock cycles for
running the program on machines 1 and 2.
| Class |
Machine 1 |
Machine 2 |
Instruction count |
| Class A |
1 |
2 |
10 |
| Class B |
3 |
2 |
6 |
| Class C |
5 |
4 |
3 |
| Class D |
5 |
6 |
2 |
Show your work for calculating the clock cycles in your lab writeup. Also
answer the following questions in your lab writeup:
- Which machine has the better clock cycles for the program?
- How much better is that machine?
Part 2 - Benchmarks
For this part of the lab, you will be looking at the SPECint 2006 benchmark
results for the lab machines used in the new building. Go to the SPEC website:
http://www.spec.org.
Select Results from the top menu, then select CPU2006->Search from the pulldown
menu (if you click Results, select the simple search under CPU2006). The
search type should be "Hardware Vendor" by default. In the search field, enter
"Sun" without the quotes and hit enter. This will bring up all the results for
Sun Microsystems. Scroll down to "Sun Ultra 40 M2" and select the HTML report
on the right-hand side of the search results. Note under the hardware section
that the tested system does not directly match the hardware installed in this
lab. It is the high-end configuration for this model line, with more memory
than we have in the machines in 315. Also, the CINT2006 Rates section is a
metric for the throughput (multiple tasks at once) while the CINT2006 section
is a metric for the speed (single task at a time). Look at the Sun Ultra 40 M2
in both those sections.
Keep that tab open and open another tab/window. Go back to the search page.
Select "Processor" as the search type and enter "AMD Opteron 2222 SE" as the
search string. This will bring up about a half dozen systems that use the same
processor. Select one other machine from that list and compare its results to
the Sun Ultra 40's results. Look at the results for individual programs in the
benchmark and also compare the hardware of the two systems. Write up a one to
two paragraph report on the comparison.
Email me your writeup for both sections.