jclark@sdcc6.ucsd.edu (John Clark) (02/22/91)
Sometime ago I saw a sequence of articles about SPECMARKS. I of course did not record them and now someone is asking me about them. Could some one mail me the info. As I recall it was some entity with a test suite that test a machine in it's standard configurations, as in send in a machine running un*x and get back a SPECMARK. -- John Clark jclark@ucsd.edu
rnovak@mips.COM (Robert E. Novak) (02/26/91)
In article <16893@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> jclark@sdcc6.ucsd.edu (John Clark) writes: >Sometime ago I saw a sequence of articles about SPECMARKS. I of >course did not record them and now someone is asking me about them. >Could some one mail me the info. As I recall it was some entity >with a test suite that test a machine in it's standard >configurations, as in send in a machine running un*x and get back a >SPECMARK. >-- > >John Clark >jclark@ucsd.edu What is SPEC? SPEC is the Systems Performance Evaluation Cooperative. More simply stated, it is a consortium of companies that are concerned about a level playing field on which both customers and vendors can measure computer system performance. SPEC's mission is to create a realistic yardstick to measure the performance of advanced computer systems. What has SPEC done? SPEC has released a suite of 10 benchmarks that are availabe for a nominal cost to anyone. The SPEC Benchmark Release 1.0 is only the first of many suites which will encompass a broad spectrum of tests of performance. All 10 of these programs are primarily CPU-intensive in nature. Half of the programs are Fortran floating point intensive applications and the other half are C language integer intensive applications. Despite the overall CPU intensity of these applications, a number of I/O side-effects and cache organization impacts have been noted with these applications. For example, the espresso, fpppp, and tomcatv applications proved to be very memory intensive. One measure of that intensity is that only 4 of the published performance numbers to date have been run on less than 16 megabytes of memory. The gcc application (a portable C compiler) actually performs a healthy amount of I/O, but the code generator is so CPU intensive, that it dominates the performance characteristics of this application. The SPEC applications represent a large body of code (over 14 megabytes of source) which span a range of application arenas. The membership to SPEC is open to any interested company. SPEC is not devoted to any single architecture nor any particular philosophy of computing systems. SPEC has created a framework in which a wide variety of applications can be tested by a very large audience of computer users. SPEC encourages end-users to use the suite for their own testing. To order SPEC, here are the 3 options: Option #1 - SPEC benchmark tape (source code on QIC-24 tar tape) $300 Option #2 - SPEC Newsletter only - $399 Option #3 - SPEC Newsletter/Tape Combination $699 Outside the U.S. and Canada, please add $25. For more information on SPEC, please contact SPEC c/o Waterside Associates 415/792-3334 or write to them at (new address as of 1/1/91): SPEC Waterside Associates 39138 Fremont Blvd., 3rd Floor Fremont, CA. 94538 After 3/1/91: Franson & Hagerty 181 Metro Drive Suite 300 San Jose, CA 95110 PHONE: (408) 453-5220 FAX: (408) 453-8723 -- Robert E. Novak Mail Stop 5-10, MIPS Computer Systems, Inc. {ames,decwrl,pyramid}!mips!rnovak 950 DeGuigne Drive, Sunnyvale, CA 94086 rnovak@mips.COM (rnovak%mips.COM@ames.arc.nasa.gov) +1 408 524-7183