About architectural and nonarchitectural performance-monitoring events

[Chenjie_Y_]

Hello all,

I am reading the manual, Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer’s Manual, chapter 19 performance-monitoring events,

I find all the events are classified into either architectural or nonarchitectural catalog.

Can any body tell me what's the intention of such classification, and what do architectrual and nonarchitestural stand for?

Thank you.

[Patrick_F_Intel1]

Hello Chenjie,

Architectural means the event will be supported going forward. The event will always be present on future chips (unless the event is something like an L3 event and the chip doesn't have an L3).

"Not architectural events" may not be present in future chips.

Pat

[Chenjie_Y_]

Thank  you Pat