The Workload You Have And The System You Get: The Impact Of Workload Characterization In Computer System Design

Lodewijk Bonebakker, SUN

Stevenson Hall 1300
12:00 PM - 12:50 PM

System design takes place against a set of requirements. These requirements may be functional, technical, or financial. In the computer system design process there is the desire to perform well on standardized benchmarks, keep the processor cost effective and do well on workloads important to the customer base. It is infeasible to do in-depth analysis of all workloads, thus designers have to resort to a limited set of workloads that are assumed to be representative. Choosing these representative workloads is an interaction between the designers and the marketing department. One of the serious challenges for computer system and processor designers is the fact that several years lie between their design decisions and the final system. During that time the relevance of the design workloads may change. As a result, the processor delivered may no longer be optimal for the market when it is first released, leading to loss of revenue as well as prestige. This talk outlines the tension between general purpose and specific processors, the rate of change of workloads in the market and gives examples of processor design failures with an analysis of what the leading cause might have been.