How is it possible to have more stalled-cycles-frontend, than cycles?

Software Tuning, Performance Optimization & Platform Monitoring

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How is it possible to have more stalled-cycles-frontend, than cycles?

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I ran a particular workload collecting the following performance counter results. The workload was designed to produce bad results.

But what I don't understand is how is it possible to have more stalled-cycles-frontend, than cycles? I've seen the same pattern on numerous occasions. 

  38,836,869,351      cycles                                                      
  73,845,119,292      stalled-cycles-frontend   #  190.14% frontend cycles idle   
   9,104,536,903      instructions              #    0.23  insn per cycle         
                                                  #    8.11  stalled cycles per insn
       595,996,044      dtlb_load_misses.miss_causes_a_walk                                   
           100,735      itlb_misses.miss_causes_a_walk

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