I hit similar issue when I collected instructions and cycles of chrome/safari with encounter in instrument when running some benchmark.
In macOS 10.14.3 the instructions and cycles are "327,676,280,611" and "313,530,696,961" for Safari. But in macOS 10.15.3 the instruments and cycles are "186,164,577,783,644,900,000,000" and "186,201,488,160,639,160,000,000" for Safari.
And the IPCs in these 2 different version macOS are also different, "1.0451" and "0.9998".
For another benchmark the data are "instructions: 473,398,789,785,837,500,000,000", "cycles: 473,195,886,015,914,200,000,000", "IPC: 1.0004" in macOS 10.15.3. And the data are "instrutions: 1,599,424,150,619", "cycles: 839,626,234,915", "IPC: 1.9049".
Why is there so big gap between there 2 macOS?
Note: Almost same score for same benchmark in different macOS.