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Design goals and performance metrics

Short answer

Design goals are high performance, low cost, compatibility, reliability, scalability, and power efficiency. Performance metrics include clock speed, CPI, MIPS, CPU time, throughput, response time, speedup (Amdahl's law: 1/((1-f)+f/s)), and standard benchmarks.

Explain the design goals and performance metrics for a computer system regarding its organization and architecture.

Design goals

The aim in designing computer organization and architecture is to get the best performance at a low cost with reliability and compatibility.

  1. Performance: high speed and throughput.
  2. Cost: low cost per unit of performance.
  3. Compatibility: new machines should run old software (same instruction set).
  4. Reliability and availability: the system should work correctly for long periods.
  5. Scalability and extensibility: easy to add memory, devices and processors.
  6. Power efficiency and size: especially for mobile and embedded systems.

Performance metrics

  • Clock speed: number of clock cycles per second (Hz). Cycle time = 1 / f.
  • CPI (cycles per instruction): average clock cycles needed for one instruction.
  • Instruction execution rate (MIPS) = f / (CPI × 10⁶).
  • CPU time = (instruction count × CPI) / clock rate.
  • MFLOPS: million floating-point operations per second, used for scientific work.
  • Throughput: number of tasks completed per unit time.
  • Response (execution) time: time from start to finish of a task.
  • Speedup = time without improvement / time with improvement. Amdahl's law: Speedup = 1 / ((1 - f) + f / s), where f is the fraction improved and s its speedup.
  • Benchmarks: standard programs (for example SPEC) to compare machines fairly.

✓ Answer checked by Claude Opus 5.5 (high effort)

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