Performance Metrics

The performance of a computer system is more difficult :

• Performance is multi-dimensional; floating point performance, integer performance, and input-output (e.g. disk) performance are all orthogonal.

• Performance depends on details of the program, often in very subtle ways.

• Performance depends heavily on the compiler (which may change long after the architecture has been designed)

• Performance can often be improved by manual recoding (especially in parallel programs).