Abstract:
Performance Modeling of Alpha/WindowsNT Applications and Operating System

In the scalable computing group at Digital CRL, we are researching future computer architectures. Being the scalable computing group, we are interested in parallel and multithreaded applications, programming models, and architectures. Our work includes developing new architectures (at both the CPU and system level) and modeling the performance of both existing and new applications on the proposed architectures. We use trace-driven and simulation-driven performance modeling. All of our simulation-driven work has been from Unix applications, but we have worked with some instruction traces from Microsoft SQL Server.

Because Digital's corporate strategy relies so heavily on Windows NT, we are broadening our focus to include Windows NT/Alpha in our architecture studies. For this reason, we have been working with Stanford to add an Alpha CPU model to the SimOS (https://www-flash.stanford.edu/SimOS/) simulator and to add the support necessary to boot and run Windows NT under SimOS. Our goal is to study both applications and operating system behavior in both Unix and Windows environments.

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James E. Hicks, Ph.D.
Digital Cambridge Research Lab
telephone: +1 (617) 692 7622 fax : +1 (617) 692 7650
https://www.research.digital.com/CRL/people/jamey/bio.html
Digital Equipment Corporation, Cambridge Research Laboratory,
One Kendall Square, Bldg. 700, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA