The computer architect's workbench

When comparing processor and memory architectures, when evaluating paper architecture, or when evaluating individual architecture features there are three fundamental issues that affect the validity of results: first, the influence of differences in architectural features not under investigation; second, the influence of the quality differences between compile-time trajectories; and third, the influence of the choice of benchmarks (representing a specific application or application area) driving the comparisons. An attempt to alleviate these problems without sacrificing flexibility and evaluation speed is embodied in the Architect's Workbench (AWB). The AWB is a set of software tools with the sole purpose of performing architecture comparison and evaluation of architecture features on a fair basis. The AWB has been used extensively for the evaluation of architecture features such as instruction encoding, register allocation, and register sets, as well as memory components like instruction and data caches. >