[comp.sys.encore] SPEC benchmarks

george_jones@giza.cis.ohio-state.edu (02/23/90)

I stopped by the Solbourne exhibit at UniForum, giving them my name and address
in the process.  Of couse things (that I requeste) showed up in my mailbox.
But also inclosed was information on what looks like a multi-vendor
attempt at generating standardized benchmarks for high performance (whatever 
that means this week)  systems.  The name of the benchmark quite is SPEC.
They do things like run GCC on a set of files and run various standardized
engineering applications to try to generate timings that will provide
a basis for meaningful comparisons.

Has anybody else heard of this ?  Is it anything more than a Solbourne 
marketing tool ?  Are their tests meaningful ?

---George Jones
--
OSU Computer & Inf. Science 2036 Neil Ave.,Columbus,Ohio 43210. 614-292-7325
george@cis.ohio-state.edu or ...!osu-cis!george
EMACS: Eight Megabytes and Constantly Swapping.

george@jones.cis.ohio-state.edu (George M. Jones) (02/23/90)

Thanks to everyone who replied.  I got the the inforamtion that I was
looking for and then some.  Looks like I will have to re-subscribe to
comp.arch (more volume to digest :-( )

---George Jones
-=-
OSU Computer & Inf. Science 2036 Neil Ave.,Columbus,Ohio 43210. 614-292-7325
george@cis.ohio-state.edu or ...!osu-cis!george
"Doubleback alley takes me back, and in my mind I see,
Happy smiling faces, if if flog my memory" --- Dirk McQuigley (The Ruttles)

preece@urbana.mcd.mot.com (Scott E. Preece) (02/28/90)

SPEC (System Performance Evaluation Consortium, I think), is a
multivendor effort to produce benchmarks that are well-defined and
meaningful (to the extent that any benchmarks other than your own
applications can ever be useful).  They publish both results on
individual components of the benchmark set and a single figure (the
SPECmark) combining the results.  All caveats regarding the usefulness
of any single measure of performance need to be applied.
--
scott preece
motorola/mcd urbana design center	1101 e. university, urbana, il   61801
uucp:	uunet!uiucuxc!udc!preece,	 arpa:	preece@urbana.mcd.mot.com