Lower IPC indicates a program will complete in less time.
Lower IPC indicates a stalled pipeline. The Neoverse N1 is capable of up to 4 instructions per cycle and higher IPC means it is retiring more instructions in each cycle.
High backend stall rate is a signal to look at data cache metrics and the memory system.
If you see a high backend stall rate you should investigate L1 data cache and unified L2 and last level caches, instruction mix, and data TLB.
Telemetry Solution provides topdown-tool.