Patterns in Program References

This paper describes a study of some of the characteristics of program referencing patterns. Program behavior is investigated by constructing stochastic models for the page reference mechanism and evaluating the validity of the assumptions made through comparison with empirical results. The notion of a regime process is shown to play a useful role in describing the observed phenomena mathematically. The study falls within the realm of a rapidly growing field of computer science known as compumetrics, where quantitative and qualitative methods are being applied to the study and evaluation of computer performance.