I agree; compiler-type code will miss the cache most of the time. A simple test with clang++ compiling some nontrivial piece of C++: 0 ls

I agree; compiler-type code will miss the cache most of the time. A simple test with clang++ compiling some nontrivial piece of C++: 0 lsd_uops 1,092,318,746 idq_dsb_uops ( +- 0.49% ) 4,045,959,682 idq_mite_uops ( +- 0.06% ) The LSD is disabled in this chip (Skylake) due to errata, but we can see only 1/5th of the uops come from the uops cache. However, the more relevant experiment in terms of power is how many cycles is the cache active instead of the decoders: 0 lsd_cycles_active 378,993,057 idq_dsb_cycles ( +- 0.18% ) 1,616,999,501 idq_mite_cycles ( +- 0.07% ) The ratio is similar: the regular decoders are not active only around 1/5th of the time. In comparison, gzipping a 20M file looks a lot better: 0 lsd_cycles_active 2,900,847,992 idq_dsb_cycles ( +- 0.07% ) 407,705,985 idq_mite_cycles ( +- 0.33% )