1. The document describes methods for computing trace metrics like instruction depth, height, and critical path length for basic blocks. It involves analyzing data dependencies between instructions within and across blocks to determine earliest issue cycles while traversing the trace in postorder and inverse postorder.
2. Key steps include finding the best predecessor and successor blocks for each block, computing depth and height values bottom-up and top-down based on dependency latencies, and tracking register liveness across blocks to determine the overall critical path.