Balance in architectural design

Abstract

A performance metric, normalized time, which is closely related to such measures as the area-time product of VLSI theory and the price/performance ratio of advertising literature is introduced. This metric captures the idea of a piece of hardware 'pulling its own weight', that is, contributing as much to performance as it costs in resources. The authors prove general theorems for stating when the size of a given part is in balance with its utilization and give specific formulas for commonly found linear and quadratic devices. They also apply these formulas to an analysis of a specific processor element and discuss the implications for bit-serial-versus-word-parallel, RISC-versus-CISC (reduced-versus complex-instruction-set-computer), and VLIW (very-long-instruction-word) designs.<>