Performance characterization of the Pentium Pro processor

In this paper, we characterize the performance of several business and technical benchmarks on a Pentium Pro processor based system. Various architectural data are collected using a performance monitoring counter tool. Results show that the Pentium Pro processor achieves significantly lower cycles per instruction than the Pentium processor due to its out of order and speculative execution, and non-blocking cache and memory system. Its higher clock frequency also contributes to even higher performance.