IT/SY(CISE): Designing Microprocessors and Computer Systems for Emerging Workloads

万维网的显著增长导致了一些与计算机应用相关的新信息技术的出现和普及。新兴的计算机工作负载涉及各种软件、协议和标准的集成：gui、Java、CORBA、cgi、perl、TCP/IP、HTTP和HTML只是其中的一小部分。促进新兴应用顺利使用互联网涉及设计高效的计算机系统和微处理器，用于为这些应用服务的计算机。这些工作负载中的大多数刚刚出现，它们的行为并没有被计算机设计师和架构师很好地理解。许多运行这些应用程序的微处理器是在这些工作负载出现之前设计的。提出的研究包括理解信息技术时代的新兴工作负载，设计微处理器和计算机系统，使其有效执行。它包括确定在这些工作负载执行期间周期的去向，以及确定性能损失的来源。该研究将确定瓶颈，并确定架构增强以提高性能。商用处理器上的性能监控计数器将用于第一级的表征，然后是详细的完整系统模拟，以分析设计权衡。拟议的研究将与我们的工业合作伙伴，IBM, Tivoli，英特尔和AMD密切合作。该项目将成为影响信息技术时代微处理器和计算机系统设计的长期综合研究计划的一个组成部分。

The phenomenal growth of the World Wide Web has resulted in the emergenceand popularity of several new information technology related computerapplications. The emerging computer workloads involve the integrationof a variety of software, protocols, and standards: GUIs, Java, CORBA, cgi, perl, TCP/IP, HTTP, and HTML are just a few of them. Facilitatingsmooth use of the internet for emerging applications involves designingefficient computer systems and microprocessors for use in the computersthat serve these applications. Most of these workloads are just emerging,and their behavior is not well-understood by computer designers andarchitects. Many of the microprocessors that run these applications weredesigned before the advent of these workloads.The proposed research consists of understanding emerging workloads of theInformation Technology era and designing microprocessors and computersystems for their efficient execution. It involves identifying where thecycles are gone during execution of these workloads, and identifyingsources of loss of performance. The study will pin point bottlenecks, andidentify architectural enhancements to improve performance. Theperformance monitoring counters present on commercial processors will beused for the first level of characterization followed by detailed completesystem simulations for analyzing design tradeoffs. The proposed researchwill be conducted in close collaboration with our industrial partners,IBM, Tivoli, Intel and AMD. The project will serve as an integral part ofa long term, comprehensive research program to influence the design ofmicroprocessors and computer systems for the information technology era.