Pipeline characteristics
Throughput: Number of items (cars, instructions, operations) that exit the pipeline per unit time. Ex: 1 inst / clock cycle, 10 cars/ hour, 10 fp operations /cycle.
Stage time: The pipeline designer’s goal is to balance the length of each pipeline stage. Balanced pipeline. In general,
stage time = Time per instruction on non-pipelined machine / number of stages.
In many instances, stage time = max (times for all stages).
CPI : Pipeline yields a reduction in cycles per instruction. CPI approx = stage time.