On Thu, 7 Mar 2019 17:01:36 +1100, Matthew Donald wrote:

>Describing memory as the new disk is quite apt.
>
>A given instruction may take between zero and hundreds of thousands of
>clocks. Z10 and later processors execute upto 11 instructions in parallel,
>although they rarely exceed three.
>
>The key bottle neck is operand access times. L1 cache costs 1 clock cycle.
>L2 costs 7 clocks. L3 is 60 clocks and L4 is 600.  A simple main memory
>access (assuming a TLB hit otherwise there may be 2 further memory accesses
>to look up the page table) will take 2000 clocks. If the operand is in a CF
>storage structure which is part of a GDPS Plex then access may take
>hundreds of thousands of clocks.
> 
Don't forget page faults.

Given the uncertainty in instruction timing, how can companies author
Service Level Agreements?

I once used a site with a CDC 6400 where the DP manager tried mightily,
for chargeback purposes, to make resource accounting repeatable regardless
of background loading.  Failed.

-- gil

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