Workload Characterization an Essential Step in Computer Systems Performance Analysis - Methodology and Tools

Abstract

Computer system performance is a very complex process in which the hardware and software manufacturers invest important human and financial resources. Workload characterization represents an essential component of performance analysis. This paper presents a trace based methodology for software applications evaluation. It introduces a new analysis concept designed to significantly ease this process and it presents a set of experimental data collected using the new analysis structure on a representative set of scientific and commercial applications. Several important conclusions are drawn regarding workload characteristics, classifications and runtime behavior. This type of data is used by the computer architects in their efforts to maximize the performance of the hardware platforms these applications are going to execute on.

Keywords

• performance analysis
• workload characterization
• instruction traces
• instruction decomposition
• data locality