ECE4100 Lab 1-Trace Analyzer Solution

PROBLEM DESCRIPTION: The first lab assignment is aimed at doing analysis of the static and dynamic occurrences of instructions in a given benchmark trace. The benchmark traces are a capture of what instructions the CPU performed during a single run of a given program.

We will provide a code template and traces from four benchmarks (gcc, mcf, libquantum, and bzip2) selected from the SPEC CPU2006 suite. We will also provide a trace reader for these traces. Your job is to do the following:

Task 1: Quantify the mix of the dynamic instruction stream. The instructions in the trace are classified as five types: ALU, LOAD, STORE, CBR (Conditional Branch), and OTHER. You will modify the provided code to count the number of dynamic instructions for each category and the percentage of these instruction types in the instruction mix.

Task 2: Estimate the overall CPI using a simple CPI model in which the CPI for each category of instructions is provided. We will use the following CPI for each category: 1) ALU: 1
2) Load: 2
3) Store: 2
4) CBR: 3
5) Other: 1

Note: As the instruction mix for each trace is likely to be different, the CPI for each trace is likely to be different also.

Task 3: Estimate the instruction footprint by counting the number of unique PCs in the benchmark trace (ideally, this information should be multiplied by the average bytes per instruction to get the total footprint, however for this lab we will forego this multiplication).

HOW TO GET STARTED:
This lab is designed to be run on the reference machine. (See the “Reference Machine” section below to identify yours.)
1. Extract the tarball: tar -xvzf Lab_1.tar.gz
2. Change into the extracted directory: cd Lab_1
3. ls — Lab_1 contains four subdirectories: src, scripts, traces, and results
4. cd src
5. ls (there are four files: Makefile, trace.h, sim.cpp, studentwork.cpp)
6. Open studentwork.cpp in your favorite editor (e.g. nano studentwork.cpp) – this is where you’ll write the function analyze_trace_record() to update the stats variables (stat_*).
a. The functions to read the trace files and print the final stats are already provided for you in sim.cpp. Do not modify this file.
b. Types are defined in trace.h. Do not modify this file.
7. Once you write the function, type make — this should create an executable sim
8. ./sim ../traces/bzip2.otr.gz (to run one trace and see the output)
9. Do a sanity check to see if the output makes sense (or if you need to debug your code)
10. Once your code is ready, go to the scripts directory: cd ../scripts

WHAT TO SUBMIT: Two files ONLY: Your studentwork.cpp and report.txt.
Do NOT include sim.cpp or trace.h. Your code in studentwork.cpp MUST work with the unmodified versions of these files.


REFERENCE MACHINE:
STUDENTS IN ECE 4100/6100 SECTION: We will use ece-linlabsrv01.ece.gatech.edu as the reference machine for this course. (https://help.ece.gatech.edu/labs/names)


STUDENTS IN CS 6290 SECTION: We will use shuttle3.cc.gatech.edu as the reference machine for this course. (https://support.cc.gatech.edu/facilities/general-access-servers)

Before submitting your code ensure that your code compiles on the reference machine for your section and generates the desired output (without any extra printf statements). Please follow the submission instructions. If you do not follow the submission file names, you will not receive the full credit.
(Note that Canvas appends a number to file names whenever you resubmit, e.g. report-1.txt and studentwork-1.cpp. This is acceptable and will not be penalized.)

NOTE: It is impractical for us to support other platforms such as Mac, Windows, Ubuntu etc.


FAQ:

1. How do I connect to ece-linlabsrv01.ece.gatech.edu or shuttle3.cc.gatech.edu?
i. Please be aware that accessing ece-linlabsrv01.ece.gatech.edu typically requires the use of the VPN, even when on the campus network.
b. On Windows, you can use the PuTTY SSH client to ssh from your machine to the server. (A command-line ssh tool is typically installed by default on other platforms.)
c. Use SCP for file transfers to/from the server. There are several scp GUI tools available or you can directly execute the command from the terminal.

2. I get “Permission denied” or “Access denied” when trying to connect to ecelinlabsrv01.ece.gatech.edu.

3. I get an error when I try to execute the runall.sh script.
Check that you have execute permissions on both runall.sh and genreport.ecelinsrv7. Add execute permissions to these files using the command:
chmod +x runall.sh genreport.ecelinsrv7

4. I get an error “unrecognized command-line option "-std=c++11"” when compiling on shuttle3.cc.gatech.edu. In the Makefile, change the line:
CXXFLAGS=-g -std=c++11 -Wall to the following:
CXXFLAGS=-g -Wall
This will allow your code to compile if you avoid using any C++11 features.
Don’t worry about submitting the modified Makefile. If needed, we will apply this modification when grading without any additional action on your part.