On Studying CPU Performance of CloudLab Hardware

Empirical performance measurements of computer systems almost always exhibit variability and anomalies. Run-to-run and server-to-server variations are common for CPU, memory, disk, and network performance characteristics. In our previous work, we focused on taming performance variability for memory, disk, and network [1] and established an interactive analysis service at: https://confirm.fyi/ to help users of the CloudLab testbed [2] better plan and conduct their experiments. In this paper, we describe our analysis of CPU variability based on over 1.3M performance measurements from nearly 1,800 servers and present our initial findings.