CPU Performance and its

factors
Prof. Jayavignesh
Assistant Professor
SENSE
Clock Speed and Instructions per second
• Operations performed by the processor
• Fetching an Instruction
• Decoding the instruction
• Performing an arithmetic operation etc..
• Are governed by SYSTEM CLOCK
• SPEED of the processor is dictated by the pulse frequency produced
by the clock (CYCLES / SECOND) or Hertz (Hz)
• Clock Signal generated by Quartz Crystal generates constant signal wave while
power is applied. This wave is converted to digital voltage pulse stream
provided in constant flow to processor circuitry.
• 1 GHz processor – receives 1 billion pulses / second (Clock Rate / Speed)
Instruction Execution
• Involves number of discrete steps
1. Fetching the instruction from memory
2. Decoding the various portions of the instruction
3. Loading and Storing the data
4. Performing Arithmetic and Logical Operations
• Most instruction on most processors
• Require MULTIPLE CLOCK CYCLES to complete
• Some instructions – few clock cycles ; others – dozen …
Key Factors that affect performance
• Instruction Count
• Number of instructions executed by the program

• CPI – Clock cycles per instruction

• Average number of clock cycles each instruction takes to execute
• Different Instructions take Different Amount of Time depending on what
they do
• Average of All instructions executed in the program

• Clock Cycle Time (CCT)

 Basic Component of Performance and
How each is measured
Components of Performance Units of Measure
1. CPU Execution Time for a Seconds for the program
program
2. Instruction count Instructions executed for the
program
3. Clock Cycles per instruction (CPI) Avg no of cycles per instruction
4. Clock Cycle Time (CCT) Seconds per Clock Cycle
Execution Time (Seconds / Program)

𝐼𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝐶𝑙𝑜𝑐𝑘 𝑐𝑦𝑐𝑙𝑒𝑠 𝑆𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑑𝑠

= 𝑥 x
𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑚 𝐼𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝐶𝑙𝑜𝑐𝑘 𝐶𝑦𝑐𝑙𝑒