Performance Characterization of SPEC CPU2006 Integer Benchmarks on x86-64 Architecture

— As x86-64 processors become the CPU of choice for the personal computer market, it becomes increasingly important to understand the performance we can expect by migrating applications from a 32-bit environment to a 64-bit environment. For applications that can effectively exploit a larger memory address space (e.g., commercial databases and digital content authoring tools), it is not surprising that x86-64 can provide a performance boost. However, for less-demanding desktop applications that can fit in a 32-bit address space, we would like to know if we can expect any performance benefits by moving to this platform. In this paper, we report on a range of performance characteristics for programs compiled for both 32 bits and 64 bits and run directly (32-bit binaries are run in compatibility mode1 ; 64-bit binaries are run in 64-bit mode) on a single x86-64 based system. In this study we utilize the integer benchmarks from the newly released SPEC CPU2006 suite. We have observed tha...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: IISWC
• Authors: Dong Ye, Joydeep Ray, Christophe Harle, David R. Kaeli
• Keywords: 32-bit, 64-bit Mode, IISWC 2006, Operating Systems, Performance