LAUSR

Web browser are traditionally benchmarked using user-centric page-load times. We found such metrics inaccurate from an architectural perspective, and limit hardware and systems optimization efforts, for performance and energy efficiency. In this article, we introduce SysPLT, an accurate and stable metric targeting system optimization for browsers. SysPLT tracks page load time based on browser's architectural activities. SysPLT captures on average 2.29× micro-architectural events compared to existing user-centric metrics, and provides insights to correct counter-intuitive system design choices recommended by user-centric metrics. We also show that SysPLT is more stable across repeated runs and different machine settings.