Intel VTune Tutorial: CPU Architectures

The second tutorial of the Intel VTune seriers serves as a small interlude, providing some context about CPU architecture concepts. It covers a brief description of the front-end and back-end of a CPU core. These concepts are a necessary basis to understand the language of VTune profiles.

Video

(Slides as pdf)

Quiz

1. How does knowing CPU architecture concepts help with using VTune?

	VTunes analysis results are often expressed in these terms.
	VTune measurements are always presented in a CPU diagram.
	It is impossible to use VTune without a thorough understanding of CPUs!

2. What part of the CPU is executing instructions?

	The Front-end
	The Back-end
	The Cache

3. What part of the CPU is preparing instructions for the execution?

	The Back-end
	The Cache
	The Front-end

4. How are profile metrics related to the CPU architecture?

	All metrics describe how efficiently data is moved from memory to the CPU.
	Bad results always highlight inefficiencies in computation.
	Each metric focusses on a different aspect of the architecture.

5. What is a "port" in CPU architectures?

	A source of data from network connections.
	A channel to read/write data from memory or use co-processors.
	CPUs have only a single port, connecting the front-end to the back-end.