Chapter 1: Fundamentals of Computer Design

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Chapter 1 Fundamentals of Computer Design

• Introduction, class of computers
• Instruction set architecture (ISA)
• Technology trend performance, power, cost
• Dependability
• Measuring performance

CDA5155 Spring, 2008, Peir / University of
Florida
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Microprocessor Performance Trends
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Conventional Wisdom

• Old CW Uniprocessor performance 2X / 1.5 yrs
• New CW Power Wall ILP Wall Memory Wall
• New Brick Wall
• ? Uniprocessor performance now 2X / 5(?) yrs
• ? Sea change in chip design multiple cores
  (2X processors per chip / 2 years)
• More simpler processors are more power efficient
• Exploit TLP and DLP, not ILP
• Programmer / compiler involvement

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Classes of Computers

• Desk top
• Still largest market in dollar amount
• Driven by price-performance
• Application-driven performance evaluation
• Server
• High performance, high power
• Availability, scalability
• Designed for efficient throughput
• Embedded system
• Largest volume
• Real-time performance requirement
• Minimize memory and power

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Computer Architecture

• Old Definition
• Old definition of computer architecture
  instruction set design
• Other aspects of computer design called
  implementation
• Insinuates implementation is uninteresting or
  less challenging
• Right view is computer architecture gtgt ISA
• Architects job much more than instruction set
  design technical hurdles today more challenging
  than instruction set design
• New Definition
• What really matters is the functioning of the
  complete system
• hardware, runtime system, compiler, operating
  system, application
• In networking, called the End to End argument
• Computer architecture is not just about
  transistors, individual instructions, or
  particular implementations
• E.g., RISC replaced complex instr. with compiler
  simple instr.

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ISA

• An instruction set architecture is a
  specification of a standardized
  programmer-visible interface to hardware,
  comprised of
• A set of instructions (instruction types and
  operations)
• With associated argument fields, assembly syntax,
  and machine encoding.
• A set of named storage locations and addressing
• Registers, memory, Programmer-accessible
  caches?
• A set of addressing modes (ways to name
  locations)
• Types and sizes of operands
• Control flow instructions
• Often an I/O interface (usually memory-mapped)

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Example MIPS
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r0 r1 r31
Programmable storage 232 x bytes 31 x 32-bit
GPRs (R00) 32 x 32-bit FP regs (paired DP) HI,
LO, PC
Data types ? Format ? Addressing Modes?
PC lo hi
Arithmetic logical Add, AddU, Sub, SubU,
And, Or, Xor, Nor, SLT, SLTU, AddI, AddIU,
SLTI, SLTIU, AndI, OrI, XorI, LUI SLL, SRL, SRA,
SLLV, SRLV, SRAV Memory Access LB, LBU, LH, LHU,
LW, LWL,LWR SB, SH, SW, SWL, SWR Control J,
JAL, JR, JALR BEq, BNE, BLEZ,BGTZ,BLTZ,BGEZ,BLTZA
L,BGEZAL
32-bit instructions on word boundary
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MIPS64 Instruction Format
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Overview of This Course

• Understanding the design techniques, machine
  structures, technology factors, evaluation
  methods that determine the form of computers in
  21st Century

Parallelism
Technology
Programming
Languages
Applications
Interface Design (ISA)
Computer Architecture Organization
Hardware/Software Boundary
Compilers
Operating
Measurement Evaluation
History
Systems
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Technology Trend

• Drill down into 4 technologies
• Disks,
• Memory,
• Network,
• Processors
• Compare 1980 vs. 2000
• Performance Milestones in each technology
• Compare for Bandwidth vs. Latency improvements in
  performance over time
• Bandwidth number of events per unit time
• E.g., M bits / second over network, M bytes /
  second from disk
• Latency elapsed time for a single event
• E.g., one-way network delay in microseconds,
  average disk access time in milliseconds

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Disk Comparison
Seagate 373453, 2003 15000 RPM (4X) 73.4 GBytes
(2500X) Tracks/Inch 64000 (80X) Bits/Inch
533,000 (60X) Four 2.5 platters (in 3.5 form
factor) Bandwidth 86 MBytes/sec
(140X) Latency 5.7 ms (8X) Cache 8 MBytes

• CDC Wren I, 1983
• 3600 RPM
• 0.03 GBytes capacity
• Tracks/Inch 800
• Bits/Inch 9550
• Three 5.25 platters
• Bandwidth 0.6 MBytes/sec
• Latency 48.3 ms
• Cache none

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Memory Comparison

• 1980 DRAM (asynchronous)
• 0.06 Mbits/chip
• 64,000 xtors, 35 mm2
• 16-bit data bus per module,
• 16 pins/chip
• 13 Mbytes/sec
• Latency 225 ns
• (no block transfer)

2000 Double Data Rate Synchr. (clocked)
DRAM 256.00 Mbits/chip (4000X) 256,000,000
xtors, 204 mm2 64-bit data bus per DIMM, 66
pins/chip (4X) 1600 Mbytes/sec (120X) Latency
52 ns (4X) Block transfers (page mode)
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LAN Comparison
Ethernet 802.3 Year of Standard 1978 10 Mbits/s
link speed Latency 3000 msec Shared
media Coaxial cable
Ethernet 802.3ae Year of Standard 2003 10,000
Mbits/s (1000X)link speed Latency 190 msec
(15X) Switched media Category 5 copper wire
Plastic Covering
Braided outer conductor
Insulator
Copper core
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CPU Comparison
2001 Intel Pentium 4 1500 MHz (120X) 4500 MIPS
(peak) (2250X) Latency 15 ns (20X) 42,000,000
xtors, 217 mm2 64-bit data bus, 423 pins 3-way
superscalar,Dynamic translate to RISC,
Superpipelined (22 stage),Out-of-Order
execution On-chip 8KB Data caches, 96KB Instr.
Trace cache, 256KB L2 cache
1982 Intel 80286 12.5 MHz 2 MIPS (peak) Latency
320 ns 134,000 xtors, 47 mm2 16-bit data bus, 68
pins Microcode interpreter, separate FPU
chip (no caches)
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Bandwidth vs. Latency
Performance Milestones Processor 286, 386,
486, Pentium, Pentium Pro, Pentium 4
(21x,2250x) Ethernet 10Mb, 100Mb, 1000Mb, 10000
Mb/s (16x,1000x) Memory Module 16bit plain DRAM,
Page Mode DRAM, 32b, 64b, SDRAM, DDR SDRAM
(4x,120x) Disk 3600, 5400, 7200, 10000, 15000
RPM (8x, 143x)
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Summary on Technology Trend

• For disk, LAN, memory, and microprocessor,
  bandwidth improves by square of latency
  improvement
• In the time that bandwidth doubles, latency
  improves by no more than 1.2X to 1.4X
• Lag probably even larger in real systems, as
  bandwidth gains multiplied by replicated
  components
• Multiple processors in a cluster or even in a
  chip
• Multiple disks in a disk array
• Multiple memory modules in a large memory
• Simultaneous communication in switched LAN
• HW and SW developers should innovate assuming
  Latency Lags Bandwidth
• If everything improves at the same rate, then
  nothing really changes
• When rates vary, require real innovation

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Define and Quantity Power

• For CMOS, traditional dominant energy
  consumption
• has been in switching transistors, called
  dynamic power

• For mobile devices, energy better metric

• For fixed task, slowing clock rate (frequency
  switched)
• reduces power, but not energy
• Capacitive load, a function of number of
  transistors
• connected to output and technology, which
  determines
• capacitance of wires and transistors
• Dropping voltage helps both, so went from 5V to
  1V
• Turn off clock to save energy dynamic power

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Example

• Suppose 15 reduction in voltage results in a
  15
• reduction in frequency. What is impact on
  dynamic
• power?

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Static Power

• Because leakage current flows even when a
• transistor is off, now static power important
  too

• Leakage current increases in processors with
• smaller transistor sizes
• Increasing the number of transistors increases
• power even if they are turned off
• In 2006, goal for leakage is 25 of total power
  
• consumption high performance designs at 40
• Very low power systems even gate voltage to
• inactive modules to control loss due to leakage

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Define and Quantity Dependability

• How decide when a system is operating properly?
• Infrastructure providers now offer Service Level
  Agreements (SLA) to guarantee that their
  networking or power service would be dependable
• Systems alternate between 2 states of service
  with respect to an SLA
• Service accomplishment, where the service is
  delivered as specified in SLA
• Service interruption, where the delivered service
  is different from the SLA
• Failure transition from state 1 to state 2
• Restoration transition from state 2 to state 1

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Dependability (cont.)

• Module reliability measure of continuous
  service accomplishment (or time to failure).2
  metrics
• Mean Time To Failure (MTTF) measures Reliability
• Failures In Time (FIT) 1/MTTF, the rate of
  failures
• Traditionally reported as failures per billion
  hours of operation
• Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) measures Service
  Interruption
• Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) MTTFMTTR
• Module availability measures service as alternate
  between the 2 states of accomplishment and
  interruption (number between 0 and 1, e.g. 0.9)
• Module availability MTTF / ( MTTF MTTR)

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Example

• If modules have exponentially distributed
  lifetimes (age of module does not affect
  probability of failure), overall failure rate is
  the sum of failure rates of the modules
• Calculate FIT and MTTF for 10 disks (1M hour MTTF
  per disk), 1 disk controller (0.5M hour MTTF),
  and 1 power supply (0.2M hour MTTF)

17,000 failure per billion hours
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Performance Measurement

• Performance metrics execution time
• Other metrics
• Wall-clock time, response time, elapsed time
• CPU time user or system
• We will focus on CPU performance, i.e. user CPU
  time on unloaded system

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Benchmark Suites

• Desktop
• New SPEC CPU2006 (Fig. 1.13)
• SPEC CPU2000 11 integer, 14 floating-point
• SPECviewperf, SPECapc graphics benchmarks
• Server
• SPEC CPU2000 running multiple copies, SPECrate
• SPECSFS for NFS performance
• SPECWeb Web server benchmark
• TPC-x measure transaction-processing, queries,
  and decision making database applications
• Embedded Processor
• New area
• EEMBC EDN Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark
  Consortium

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SPEC CPU Benchmarks
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Comparing Performance

• Arithmetic Mean
• Weighted Arithmetic Mean
• Geometric Mean
• Execution time ratio is normalized to a base
  machine
• Is used to figure out SPECrate

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SPECRatio

• SPECRatio Normalize execution times to reference
  computer, yielding a ratio proportional to
  performance
• time on reference computer
• time on computer being rated

• If program SPECRatio on Computer A is 1.25
• times bigger than Computer B, then

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Summarize Suite Performance

• Since ratios, proper mean is geometric mean
  (SPECRatio unitless, so arithmetic mean
  meaningless)

• Geometric mean of the ratios is the same as the
  ratio of the geometric means
• Ratio of geometric means Geometric mean of
  performance ratios ? choice of reference
  computer is irrelevant!
• These two points make geometric mean of ratios
  attractive to summarize performance

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Performance, Price-Performance (SPEC)
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Performance, Price-Performance (TPC-C)
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Amdahls Law

• Where
• f is a fraction of the execution time that can
  be enhanced
• n is the enhancement factor

• Example f .9, n 10 gt Speedup 5.26

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CPU Performance Equation

• Clock Cycle Time Hardware technology and
  organization
• CPI Organization and Inst Set Architecture
  (ISA)
• Instruction Count ISA and compiler technology
• We will focus more on the organization issues

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Example

• Parameters
• FP operations (including FPSQR) 25
• CPI for FP operations 4 CPI for others 1.33
• Frequency of FPSQR 2 CPI of FPSQR 20
• Compare the following 2 designs
• Decrease CPI of FPSQR to 2 or CPI of all FP to
  2.5

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Misc. Items

• Check SPEC web site for more information,
  http//www.spec.org
• Read Fallacies and Pitfalls
• For example,
• MIPS is an accurate measure for comparing
  performance among computers is a Fallacy

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Example Using MIPS

• Instruction distribution
• ALU 43, 1 cycle/inst
• Load 21, 2 cycle/inst
• Store 12, 2 cycle/inst
• Branch 24, 2 cycle/inst
• Optimization compiler reduces 50 of ALU