Systematic prototyping of superscalar computer architectures

It is argued that the correct solution to the computer architecture design process is a prototyping approach. In this approach, the initial design is selected using the workload itself. This design is an architectural prototype, specifying the high-level design decisions that are difficult to acquire via detailed simulation. These design decisions include determining the mix of function units in the execution stage of the processor and the dimensions of the caches in the memory subsystem. Architectural prototypes are selected by trading off accuracy in hardware simulation for an increase in usable workload size.<>