Groups > comp.os.msdos.programmer > #326

Re: Opcode frequency process/tools?

From	Terje Mathisen <"terje.mathisen at tmsw.no"@giganews.com>
Subject	Re: Opcode frequency process/tools?
Message-ID	<ug2mn8-pe3.ln1@ntp6.tmsw.no> (permalink)
Date	2011-10-26 21:09 +0200
References	<f5d9291d-0bb2-4088-ab58-e8b18dd8cfb9@t8g2000yql.googlegroups.com>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.asm.x86, comp.os.msdos.programmer

Cross-posted to 2 groups.

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Jim Leonard wrote:
> For the curious, I am doing this research against 16-bit x86 code
> centered on performance, such as realtime games from the 1980s and
> early 1990s.  I'm writing a benchmark for Pentium and lower machines

This sounds like you might stumble on some snippets written by me. :-)

> (this is a retrocomputing hobby project, please no discussion on the
> impracticality of such a thing) and I thought it would be a good idea
> to skew some of the benchmark test metrics to have roughly the same
> opcode frequency as actual code in the wild.
>
> I suppose that, to be truly close to my input set, I should somehow
> log program flow and get the frequency of the actual executed
> instructions.  I believe the DOSBOX emulator, if compiled in debug
> mode, can dump the last 20,000 executed instructions.  In fact, I
> think that would be more realistic; I will look into that.

Not only more realistic, rather "the only reasonable way to do it", and 
the method employed by both Intel and AMD when they try to figure out 
which instructions to fast-path in hardware and which can be allowed to 
run a little slower.

Terje

-- 
- <Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no>
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"

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Thread

Opcode frequency process/tools? Jim Leonard <mobygamer@nospicedham.gmail.com> - 2011-10-26 11:41 -0700
  Re: Opcode frequency process/tools? Terje Mathisen <"terje.mathisen at tmsw.no"@giganews.com> - 2011-10-26 21:09 +0200
    Re: Opcode frequency process/tools? Ross Ridge <rridge@nospicedham.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> - 2011-10-26 15:54 -0400
    Re: Opcode frequency process/tools? Jim Leonard <mobygamer@nospicedham.gmail.com> - 2011-10-28 07:07 -0700
      Re: Opcode frequency process/tools? Terje Mathisen <"terje.mathisen at tmsw.no"@giganews.com> - 2011-10-29 02:46 +0200
        Re: Opcode frequency process/tools? Jim Leonard <mobygamer@nospicedham.gmail.com> - 2011-10-31 07:20 -0700
          Re: Opcode frequency process/tools? Terje Mathisen <"terje.mathisen at tmsw.no"@nospicedham.giganews.com> - 2011-10-31 19:22 +0100
      Re: Opcode frequency process/tools? Jim Leonard <mobygamer@nospicedham.gmail.com> - 2011-10-31 07:41 -0700
        Re: Opcode frequency process/tools? Bogus@Embarq.com (Steve) - 2011-11-01 13:13 +0000
  Re: Opcode frequency process/tools? "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@nospicedham.noavailemail.cmm> - 2011-10-26 19:12 -0400
    Re: Opcode frequency process/tools? Jim Leonard <mobygamer@nospicedham.gmail.com> - 2011-10-28 07:11 -0700
   Re: Opcode frequency process/tools?  hopcode <hopcode@nospicedham.nulnulul.de> - 2011-10-27 01:18 +0200
    Re: Opcode frequency process/tools? Jim Leonard <mobygamer@nospicedham.gmail.com> - 2011-10-28 07:13 -0700
  Re: Opcode frequency process/tools? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@nospicedham.yahoo.com> - 2011-10-26 22:28 -0700
    Re: Opcode frequency process/tools? "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@nospicedham.noavailemail.cmm> - 2011-10-27 13:37 -0400
      Re: Opcode frequency process/tools? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@nospicedham.yahoo.com> - 2011-10-27 22:49 -0700
    Re: Opcode frequency process/tools? Jim Leonard <mobygamer@nospicedham.gmail.com> - 2011-10-28 07:24 -0700
  Re: Opcode frequency process/tools? Phil Carmody <thefatphil_demunged@nospicedham.yahoo.co.uk> - 2011-10-27 14:00 +0300
    Re: Opcode frequency process/tools? "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@nospicedham.noavailemail.cmm> - 2011-10-27 13:38 -0400
      Re: Opcode frequency process/tools? Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@nospicedham.yahoo.com> - 2011-10-27 14:51 -0500
        Re: Opcode frequency process/tools? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@nospicedham.yahoo.com> - 2011-10-27 22:40 -0700

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