Software metrics for the microcode of computer systems

Abstract The collection of data necessary to compute various software metrics constitutes a difficult task, especially for large projects written in multiple languages. We discus a number of issues associated with the collection of data for large commercial computer products and show that significant discrepancies in the value of some metrics may arise depending on the measurement method used. Using data collected from 4,635 microcode modules, which total s> 1.2 million lines of code and comprise the entire microcode of the IBM ES/4381 and IBM ES/9370 computer systems, we show the impact the computing methodology has on some studies associated with program metrics.

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