Architecture Through the Modeler’s Lens

This chapter introduces general computer architecture concepts commonly found in many textbooks and courses. However, here we will approach these differently through the lens of performance modeling. This shift in perspective changes the type of questions we ask. Hardware designers focus on how structures are built and how they interact, but performance modelers focus on what must be captured to represent the system behavior faithfully. They care about the design aspects that influence the metrics that are important to a system’s performance. For a performance modeler, identifying the details that can be ignored is as important as understanding which ones are essential.