|
USENIX 2nd Symposium on
OS Design and Implementation (OSDI '96)
Using Latency to Evaluate Interactive System Performance
Yasuhiro Endo,
Zheng Wang,
J. Bradley Chen, and
Margo Seltzer
Harvard University
Abstract
The conventional methodology for system performance measurement, which
relies primarily on throughput-sensitive benchmarks and throughput
metrics, has major limitations when analyzing the behavior and
performance of interactive workloads. The increasingly interactive
character of personal computing demands new ways of measuring and
analyzing system performance. In this paper, we present a combination
of measurement techniques and benchmark methodologies that address
these problems. We introduce several simple methods for making direct
and precise measurements of event handling latency in the context of a
realistic interactive application. We analyze how results from such
measurements can be used to understand the detailed behavior of
latency-critical events. We demonstrate our techniques in an analysis
of the performance of two releases of Windows NT and Windows 95. Our
experience indicates that latency can be measured for a class of
interactive workloads, providing a substantial improvement in the
accuracy and detail of performance information over measurements based
strictly on throughput.
|
Need help? Use our Contacts page.
Conference Index