This research presents a novel analytic model to predict the instruction execution rate of superscalar processors using the queuing model with finite-buffer size and synchronous operation mode. The proposed model is also able to analyze the performance relationship between cache and pipeline. The proposed model takes into account various kinds of architectural parameters such as instruction-level parallelism, branch probability, the accuracy of branch prediction, cache miss, and etc. To prove the correctness of the model, we performed extensive simulations and compared the results with the analytic model. Simulation results showed that the proposed model can estimate the average execution rate accurately within 10% error in most cases. The proposed model can explain the causes of performance bottleneck which cannot be uncovered by the simulation method only. The model is also able to show the effect of the cache miss on the performance of out-of-order issue superscalar processors, which can provide an valuable information in designing a balanced system.

This paper suggests a novel analytical model to predict average issue rate of both in-order and out-of-order issue policies. Most of previous works have employed only simulation methods to measure the instruction-level parallelism for performance. However these methods cannot disclose the cause of the performance bottle-neck. In this paper, the proposed model takes into account such factors as issue policy, instruction-level parallelism, branch probability, the accuracy of branch prediction, instruction window size, and the number of pipeline units to estimate the issue rate more accurately. To prove the correctness of the model, extensive simulations were performed with Intel 80386/80387 instruction traces. Simulation results showed that the proposed model can estimate the issue rate accurately within 3-10% differences. The analytical model and simulations show that the out-of-order issue can improve the superscalar performance by 70-206% compared to the in-order issue. The model employs parameters to characterize the behavior of programs and the structure of superscalar that cause performance bottle-neck. Thus, it can disclose the cause of the disproportion in performance and reduce the burden of excess simulations that should be performed whenever a new processor is designed.