The Impact of Software Structure and Policy on CPU and Memory System Performance

Abstract

Operating systems, when compared to application programs, have received disappointingly little benefit from the performance improvements of the most recent generation of microprocessors. This thesis used complete traces of software activity from a RISCbased uniprocessor to expose the dynamic behavior of operating system execution and explore the sources of poor performance. Traces from both Mach 3.0 and Ultrix implementations of UNIX permitted a study of performance differences between microkernel and monolithic implementations of the same operating system interface. The comparison showed that both system structure and policy implemented in the system have a significant impact on performance. Measurements of X11 workloads showed that memory system behavior for these large workloads differs significantly from the kinds of workloads traditionally used for performance analysis. Structural and behavioral similarities between large X11 workloads and the operating system are reflected in their overall performance.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 01, 1994
Accession Number
ADA281256

Entities

People

  • J. B. Chen

Organizations

  • Carnegie Mellon University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Application Software
  • Central Processing Units
  • Client Server Systems
  • Clocks
  • Compilers
  • Computer Architecture
  • Computer Program Documentation
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Computing System Architectures
  • Debugging
  • Instruction Set Architecture
  • Instrumentation
  • Operating Systems
  • Simulators

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Parallel and Distributed Computing.
  • Theoretical Analysis.