Computers as Components, 2nd Edition

5.7 Software Performance Optimization 257

To start the simulation process, we compile our test program using a special compiler:

% arm-linux-gcc firtest.c

This gives us an executable program (by default, a.out) that we use to simulate our program:

% arm-outorder a.out

SimpleScalar produces a large output file with a great deal of information about the pro-

gram’s execution. Since this is a simple example, the most useful piece of data is the total

number of simulated clock cycles required to execute the program:

sim_cycle 25854 # total simulation time in cycles

To make sure that we can ignore the effects of program overhead, we will execute the FIR

filter ...