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For Description of these Features… see…
http://download.intel.com/products/processor/corei7/prod_brief.pdf
The following Features Greatly affect Performance Monitoring…
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The New Performance Monitoring Unit (New Counters, New Meanings)
Intel® Wide Dynamic Execution (this includes the OOO capabilities of the processor)
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Adds complexity for performance analysis
Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology
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Adds complexity for performance analysis– if you can it is easier to turn it off during
performance analysis
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Intel® Turbo Boost Technology
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Adds complexity for performance analysis– if you can it is easier to turn it off during
performance analysis
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The Features of the Integrated Memory Controller/Smart Memory Access/QPI/8 MB Intel
Smart Cache
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Adds More things which can be/need to be measured on Nehalem
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The 3 Fixed Counters =
INST_RETIRED.ANY
CPU_CLK_UNHALTED.THREAD
CPU_CLK_UNHALTED.REF
Note- each of these counters has a corresponding Programmable version (which will use
a general purpose counter)
INST_RETIRED.ANY_P
CPU_CLK_UNHALTED.THREAD_P
CPU_CLK_UNHALTED.REF_P
Note: The New capabilities to measure uncore events is not supported by Vtune. And the new
information gathered when measuring certain events (i.e. – Load Latency in the PEBS record) is
not supported by VTune™ analyzer.
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Both Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology and Intel® Turbo Boost Technology can be enabled or
disabled through BIOS on most platforms.
Contact with the system vendor or manufacturer for the specifics of any platform before
attempting this. Incorrectly modifying bios settings from those supplied by the
manufacturer can result in rendering the system completely unusable and may void the
warranty.
Don’t forget to re-enable these features once you are through with the software optimization
process!
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