A Metric-Guided Method for Discovering Impactful Features and Architectural Insights for Skylake-Based Processors
Ahmad Yasin, Jawad Haj-Yahya, Yosi Ben-Asher, Avi Mendelson · ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization · 2019
The slowdown in technology scaling puts architectural features at the forefront of the innovation in modern processors. This article presents a Metric-Guided Method (MGM) that extends Top-Down analysis with carefully selected, dynamically adapted metrics in a structured approach. Using MGM, we conduct two evaluations at the microarchitecture and the Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) levels. Our results show that simple optimizations, such as improved representation of CISC instructions, broadly improve performance, while changes in the Floating-Point execution units had mixed impact. Overall, we report 10 architectural insights—at the microarchitecture, ISA, and compiler fronts—while quantifying their impact on the SPEC CPU benchmarks.