PC workload characterization

Abstract

The author describes a workload characterization of the Intel 80286 microprocessor executing today's most popular personal computer applications. He has created trace tapes of over 10 million instructions using Mirage, an 80286 PC/AT emulator. From these traces statistical analyses of instruction mix, CPU to memory bandwidth and branch behavior have been obtained. The characterization has also been useful in better understanding the content of commonly quoted benchmark programs. A comparison has been made between Dhrystone 1.1 and 2.0 A dynamic performance analysis has been carried out utilizing the MPES modelling system. The results show that the static instruction weightings commonly used to quantify performance omit many of the execution cycles incurred due to resource contention and pipeline stalls. The dynamic results indicate that best case static cycles per instruction estimates are consistently 25% optimistic. Results from the analysis of the branch instruction usage are also presented.