5.6 Program-Level Performance Analysis
Because embedded systems must perform functions in real time, we often need to know how fast a program runs. The techniques we use to analyze program execution time are also helpful in analyzing properties such as power consumption. In this section, we study how to analyze programs to estimate their run times. We also examine how to optimize programs to improve their execution times; of course, optimization relies on analysis.
It is important to keep in mind that CPU performance is not judged in the same way as program performance. Certainly, CPU clock rate is a very unreliable metric for program performance. But more importantly, the fact that the CPU executes part of our program quickly doesn’t mean that ...
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