CS211. Project 1. Fall 2008. Due October 20^th 12noon

For programming project only (but NOT ‘regular’ Homeworks) you must work in the assigned teams – no extra credit (or consideration) will be given if you work alone. The approved teams have been posted on the class webpages.

In this homework you are to use SimpleScalar to evaluate the performance of at least 2 benchmarks.

In order to run simulations use:

sim-outorder <name-of-benchmark>

If you just run

sim-outorder

you will get a list of all the options that can be used to configure the model, and also the

default values used.

Your task is to (i) vary the number of functional units, and (ii) the type and configuration of the branch predictors, so as to optimize the IPC and execution time for each of the 2 benchmarks (you may choose to work with other features as well, and using more benchmarks will lead to a better grade). We will try to make the benchmarks available in /usr/local/simplescalar-pisa/dev/spec/ on the computer lab machines but they also can be downloaded from class website (the simplescalar page). The 2 benchmarks that you MUST use are go and compress95. Specifically use the following benchmark executables:

go.ss and compress95.ss.

Read the README file on the website to see how to run each of the other benchmarks. 

In addition to the two required benchmarks, we have posted a couple more on the website. Once you are done with the experiments for the two required benchmarks, you should try to run more benchmarks to get a more exhaustive set of experiments. This will be taken into account during grading -- i.e., the two required are the "minimum" required to get a passing grade.

What you should turn in:

You are required to turn in a written report. Make sure you keep all the source code and raw data from the experiments in one directory and do NOT delete it. We may need to check the raw data. The report must be submitted via blackboard.

Your report is limited to 5 pages, using a 12 point font and 1.5 line spacing (you can use extra pages for figures if need be). The format of the report should follow the outline below:

1. Team Members/Authors

2. Abstract (summarize the report’s conclusions in 100 words or less)

3. Experiments: state what options you studied/ being studied, and what parameters you varied.

4. Results. (make sure you tabulate and analyze the results -- simply handing in the output of the simulations will result in a failing grade. Read the textbook to get an idea of how to tabulate and present experimental results.)

5. Conclusions (summarize critical results and key insights learned about the effect of the

parameters examined on performance). Show the best IPC you were able to obtain for each benchmark. Also show the best execution times you achieved.

Be sure to allow adequate time to run the simulations, analyze the results, and write a

complete  readable report. It is suggested that you try to summarize data in a clear

manner using tables and/or graphs. Conciseness and results are more important than long

descriptions of the process.