Appendix A: Benchmarks

Various statistics presented in the thesis are based on analysis of benchmark programs undertaken by the author or reported by others. The purpose of this section is to summarise the nature of these benchmarks and to justify their relavence to this work.

The sources of data are sumarised in table A.1.

Table A.1: Benchmark Programs

Reference	Processor		Applications

[ENDE93]	SPARC			ccreg (C compiler)
(Appendix C)	(Load/Store architecture
		with register windows)
		
					compress (data compression)

					dhry10 (synthetic benchmark)

					espresso (logic minimisation)

					fgrep (text search)

					gcc (C compiler) (same as
					[HENN90])

					rleflip (image manipulation)

[HENN90]	DLX			gcc (C compiler)
(figure 2.17)	(MIPS-like Load/Store	
		architecture)		

					Tex (text formatter)

					Spice (analogue circuit
					simulator)

[JOHN91]	MIPS R2000		5diff (text file comparison)
(table 3-2)	(Load/Store		
		architecture)		

					awk (pattern scanning and processing)
					ccom (optimizing C compiler)

					compress (file compressing
					using Lempel-Ziv encoding)

					doduc (Monte-Carlo simulation,
					double precision floating point)

					espresso (logic minimization)

					gnuchess (computer chess
					program)

					grep (reports occurences of a
					string in one or more text files)

					irsim (delay simulator for
					VLIS layouts)

					latex (document preparation
					system)

					linpack (linear equation
					solver, double precision
					floating point)

					nroff (text formatter for a
					typewritter-like device)

					simple (hyrodynamics code)

					spice2g6 (circuit simulator)

					troff (text formatter for
					typesetting device)

					wolf (standard-cell placement
					using simulated annealing)

					whetstone (standard floating
					point benchmark, double
					precision floating point)

					yacc (compiles a context-free
					grammar into LR(1) parser tables)

The applications used are intended to be typical of those commonly used in workstation environments. Some applications of low power processors have workstation-like characteristics (e.g. portable computers) and in these cases these benchmarks are relevant. In other applications with a different type of workload (e.g. signal processing) these results are less relevant and should be used with more caution.