CS 382M: Advanced Computer Architecture

Homework 1

Due: Friday January 30 5pm. No late homeworks will be accepted

Work in groups of two. Each group should turn in one homework.

From Hennessy and Patterson Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach Second Edition

• Exercise 1.2 (from H&P) (1 point)
• Exercise 1.6 (1 point)
• Exercise 1.14 (1 point)
• Performance measurement (2 points)

a. Select two different machines, and from a manual, web page, or configuration command, determine their

• CPU clock frequencies,
• peak MIPS
• SPECInt (92 or 95) ratings.

b. Devise a C program that measures the clock frequency for a computer and run it on the two machines. Turn in the program listing and output. Use comments in the program to explain how the program works and why it gives a correct result.

c. Devise a C program that measures the peak MIPS for a computer and run it on the two machines. Turn in the (commented) program listing and output.

d. Find a long-running program (>1 second) that you care about (for example, make-ing a large source tree, latex-ing a paper, compiling a large file, or whatever) and measure how long this program takes on the two platforms. Do at least 5 trials of each measurement and report the mean and standard deviation of the measurements.

e. How well does peak MIPS predict the performance of your program? How well does SPEC predict your program's performance?

• Exercise 2.2 (1 points)
• Exercise 2.3 (1 points)
• Exercise 2.13 (2 points)
• Exercise 3.1 (2 points)