CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1   Introduction

With computers playing an increasingly critical role in our day-to-day lives, it is important to know their components and how each works and of what impact they impose on performance of the computer system.

According to (Arnold, 1994) Computer performance is characterised by the amount of useful work accomplished by a computer system compared to time and resources used. Depending on the context, good computer performance is dependent on the available system resources. Most computer users do not know the system specification, they lack the knowledge of conventional way of extracting system parameters but with the computerised system in this thesis (Otherwise known as Autospec) every computer users will be able to determine the system configuration by installing and running the software.

The System development can be likened to building a house, this demands adequate planning and preparation in order to meet the objectives of the proposed design.

The parameters or the resources that are of interest in our analysis include the followings: 

• Summary
• Operating system
• CPU
• RAM
• Hard drives
• Optical drives
• Motherboard
• Graphics
• Network
• Audio
• Peripheral
• Performance

Performance analysis is the task of investigating the behaviour of program execution (Mario, 2009). The main aim is to find out the possible adjustments that might be done in order enhance the performance of computer system. Besides, the hardware architecture and software platform (operating system) where a program is executed has impact on its performance. Workload characterization involves studying the user and machine environment, observing key characteristics, and developing a workload model that can be used repeatedly. Once a workload model is available, the effect of changes in the workload and system can be easily evaluated by changing the parameters of the model. This can be achieved by using compiler directives such OpenMP multithread application. In addition, workload characterization can help you to determine what’s normal, prepare a baseline for historical comparison, comply with management reporting, and identify candidates for optimization.

Presently, multicore processors chips are being introduced in almost all the areas where a computer is needed. For example, many laptop computers have a dual core processor inside. High Performance Computing (HPC) address different issues, one of them is the exploitation of the capacities of multicore architecture(Mario, 2009).

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