Benchmark (computing): Difference between revisions

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{{shortShort description|Comparing the relativeStandardized performance of computers by running the same program on all of themevaluation}}

{{About|the use of benchmarks in computing||Benchmark (disambiguation){{!}}Benchmark}}

{{Multiple issues|{{more citations needed|date=July 2015}}

{{Expert needed|Computercomputer science|talk=Outdated sources|reason=Outdated or deprecated sources|date=October 2022}}}}

[[File:OGRE screenshot 08.png|thumb|A graphical demo running as a benchmark of the [[OGRE]] engine.]] In [[computing]], a '''benchmark''' is the act of running a [[computer program]], a set of programs, or other operations, in order to assess the relative [[Computer performance|performance]] of an object, normally by running a number of standard [[Software performance testing|tests]] and trials against it.<ref>{{Cite journal| doi = 10.1145/5666.5673| issn = 0001-0782| volume = 29| issue = 3| pages = 218–221| last1 = Fleming| first1 = Philip J.| last2 = Wallace| first2 = John J.| title = How not to lie with statistics: the correct way to summarize benchmark results| journal = Communications of the ACM| access-date = 2017-06-09| date = 1986-03-01| s2cid = 1047380| urldoi-access = http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=5666.5673free}}</ref>

The term ''benchmark'' is also commonly utilized for the purposes of elaborately designed benchmarking programs themselves.

Benchmarking is usually associated with assessing performance characteristics of [[computer hardware]], for example, the [[floating point operation]] performance of a [[Central processing unit|CPU]], but there are circumstances when the technique is also applicable to [[software]]. Software benchmarks are, for example, run against [[compiler]]s or [[database management system]]s (DBMS).

Benchmarks provide a method of comparing the performance of various subsystems across different chip/system [[Computer architecture|architectures]]. Benchmarking as a part of [[continuous integration]] is called Continuous Benchmarking.<ref>{{cite conference|doi=10.1109/IC2E.2019.00039|chapter-url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333918034|chapter=Continuous Benchmarking: Using System Benchmarking in Build Pipelines|year=2019|access-date=2023-12-03|first1=Martin|last1=Grambow|first2=Fabian|last2=Lehmann|first3=David|last3=Bermbach|title=2019 IEEE International Conference on Cloud Engineering (IC2E) |pages=241–246 |isbn=978-1-7281-0218-4 }}</ref>

== Purpose ==

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Prior to 2000, computer and microprocessor architects used [[SPEC]] to do this, although SPEC's Unix-based benchmarks were quite lengthy and thus unwieldy to use intact.

Computer manufacturerscompanies are known to configure their systems to give unrealistically high performance on benchmark tests that are not replicated in real usage. For instance, during the 1980s some compilers could detect a specific mathematical operation used in a well-known floating-point benchmark and replace the operation with a faster mathematically equivalent operation. However, such a transformation was rarely useful outside the benchmark until the mid-1990s, when [[RISC]] and [[VLIW]] architectures emphasized the importance of [[compiler]] technology as it related to performance. Benchmarks are now regularly used by [[compiler]] companies to improve not only their own benchmark scores, but real application performance.

CPUs that have many execution units — such as a [[superscalar]] CPU, a [[VLIW]] CPU, or a [[reconfigurable computing]] CPU — typically have slower clock rates than a sequential CPU with one or two execution units when built from transistors that are just as fast. Nevertheless, CPUs with many execution units often complete real-world and benchmark tasks in less time than the supposedly faster high-clock-rate CPU.

Given the large number of benchmarks available, a manufacturervendor can usually find at least one benchmark that shows its system will outperform another system; the other systems can be shown to excel with a different benchmark.

ManufacturersSoftware vendors also use benchmarks in their marketing, such as the "benchmark wars" between rival [[relational database]] makers in the 1980s and 1990s. Companies commonly report only those benchmarks (or aspects of benchmarks) that show their products in the best light. They also have been known to mis-represent the significance of benchmarks, again to show their products in the best possible light.<ref Takenname="rdbmsinformix20070612">{{Cite together,interview these|interviewer=Luanne practicesJohnson are|title=RDBMS calledWorkshop: ''benchInformix |url=https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2013/05/102702566-marketing05-01-acc.''pdf |access-date=2025-05-30 |publisher=Computer History Museum |date=2007-06-12}}</ref><ref name="rdbmsingressybase20070613">{{Cite interview |interviewer=Doug Jerger |title=RDBMS Workshop: Ingres and Sybase |url=https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2013/05/102702565-05-01-acc.pdf |access-date=2025-05-30 |publisher=Computer History Museum |date=2007-06-13}}</ref>

Ideally benchmarks should only substitute for real applications if the application is unavailable, or too difficult or costly to port to a specific processor or computer system. If performance is critical, the only benchmark that matters is the target environment's application suite.

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* Vendors tend to tune their products specifically for industry-standard benchmarks. Norton SysInfo (SI) is particularly easy to tune for, since it mainly biased toward the speed of multiple operations. Use extreme caution in interpreting such results.

* Some vendors have been accused of "cheating" at benchmarks — doingdesigning thingstheir systems such that they give much higher benchmark numbers, but makeare not thingsas worseeffective onat the actual likely workload.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.pcworld.com/article/111012/nvidias_benchmark_tactics_reassessed.html|title=NVidia's Benchmark Tactics Reassessed|first=Tom|last=Krazit|year=2003|work=IDG News|access-date=2009-08-08|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110606032058/http://www.pcworld.com/article/111012/nvidias_benchmark_tactics_reassessed.html|archive-date=2011-06-06|url-status=dead}}</ref>

* Many benchmarks focus entirely on the speed of [[computer performance|computational performance]], neglecting other important features of a computer system, such as:

** Qualities of service, aside from raw performance. Examples of unmeasured qualities of service include security, availability, reliability, execution integrity, serviceability, scalability (especially the ability to quickly and nondisruptively add or reallocate capacity), etc. There are often real trade-offs between and among these qualities of service, and all are important in business computing. [[Transaction Processing Performance Council]] Benchmark specifications partially address these concerns by specifying [[ACID]] property tests, database scalability rules, and service level requirements.

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** Facilities burden (space, power, and cooling). When more power is used, a portable system will have a shorter battery life and require recharging more often. A server that consumes more power and/or space may not be able to fit within existing data center resource constraints, including cooling limitations. There are real trade-offs as most semiconductors require more power to switch faster. See also [[performance per watt]].

** In some embedded systems, where memory is a significant cost, better [[code density]] can significantly reduce costs.

* Vendor benchmarks tend to ignore requirements for development, test, and [[IT disaster recovery|disaster recovery]] computing capacity. Vendors only like to report what might be narrowly required for production capacity in order to make their initial acquisition price seem as low as possible.

* Benchmarks are having trouble adapting to widely distributed servers, particularly those with extra sensitivity to network topologies. The emergence of [[grid computing]], in particular, complicates benchmarking since some workloads are "grid friendly", while others are not.

* Users can have very different perceptions of performance than benchmarks may suggest. In particular, users appreciate predictability — servers that always meet or exceed [[service level agreement]]s. Benchmarks tend to emphasize mean scores (IT perspective), rather than maximum worst-case response times ([[real-time computing]] perspective), or low standard deviations (user perspective).

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* Benchmarking institutions often disregard or do not follow basic scientific method. This includes, but is not limited to: small sample size, lack of variable control, and the limited repeatability of results.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://donutey.com/hardwaretesting.php|title=Hardware Testing and Benchmarking Methodology|year=2006|access-date=2008-02-24|first=Kevin|last=Castor|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080205031133/http://www.donutey.com/hardwaretesting.php|archive-date=2008-02-05}}</ref>

== Benchmarking Principlesprinciples ==

There are seven vital characteristics for benchmarks.<ref>{{cite conference|first1=Wei |last1=Dai |first2=Daniel |last2=Berleant |title=Benchmarking Contemporary Deep Learning Hardware and Frameworks: a Survey of Qualitative Metrics |date=December 12–14, 2019 |___location=Los Angeles, CA, USA |book-title=2019 IEEE First International Conference on Cognitive Machine Intelligence (CogMI)|publisher=IEEE |doi=10.1109/CogMI48466.2019.00029 |pages=148–155|url=https://dberleant.github.io/papers/BenchmarkingContemporaryDeepLearningHardwareAndFrameworks.pdf |arxiv=1907.03626 }}</ref> These key properties are:

# Relevance: Benchmarks should measure relatively vital features.

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#*tool software of CAD

#*user's application software (i.e.: MIS)

#*[[Video game]]s

#*[[Compiler]]s building a large project, for example [[Chromium (browser)|Chromium browser]] or [[Linux kernel]]

#Component Benchmark / Microbenchmark

#*core routine consists of a relatively small and specific piece of code.

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=== Industry standard (audited and verifiable) ===

* [[BAPCo consortium|Business Applications Performance Corporation (BAPCo)]]

* [[EEMBC|Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium (EEMBC)]]

* [[Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation]] (SPEC), in particular their [[SPECint]] and [[SPECfp]]

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=== Open source benchmarks ===

* [[AIM Multiuser Benchmark]] – composed of a list of tests that could be mixed to create a ‘load'load mix’mix' that would simulate a specific computer function on any UNIX-type OS.

* [[Bonnie++]] – filesystem and hard drive benchmark

* [[BRL-CAD]] – cross-platform architecture-agnostic benchmark suite based on multithreaded ray tracing performance; baselined against a VAX-11/780; and used since 1984 for evaluating relative CPU performance, compiler differences, optimization levels, coherency, architecture differences, and operating system differences.

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* [[DEISA Benchmark Suite]] – scientific HPC applications benchmark

* [[Dhrystone]] – integer arithmetic performance, often reported in DMIPS (Dhrystone millions of instructions per second)

* [[DiskSpd]] – [[Command-line]] tool]] for storage benchmarking that generates a variety of requests against [[computer file]]s, [[Disk partitioning|partitions]] or [[Computer data storage|storage devices]]

* [[Fhourstones]] – an integer benchmark

* [[Hierarchical INTegration|HINT]] – designed to measure overall CPU and memory performance

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* [[NAS benchmarks|NAS parallel benchmarks]]

* [[NBench]] – synthetic benchmark suite measuring performance of integer arithmetic, memory operations, and floating-point arithmetic

* [[PAL (software)|PAL]] – a benchmark for realtime physics engines

* [[PerfKitBenchmarker]] – A set of benchmarks to measure and compare cloud offerings.

* [[Phoronix Test Suite]] – open-source cross-platform benchmarking suite for Linux, OpenSolaris, FreeBSD, OSX and Windows. It includes a number of other benchmarks included on this page to simplify execution.

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=== Microsoft Windows benchmarks ===

* [[BAPCo consortium|BAPCo]]: MobileMark, SYSmark, WebMark

* [[CrystalDiskMark]]

* [[Futuremark|Underwriters Laboratories (UL)]]: [[3DMark]], [[PCMark]]

*[[Heaven Benchmark]]

* [[PiFast]]

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*[[Super PI]]

* [[SuperPrime]]

*[[Valley Benchmark]]

* [[Whetstone (benchmark)|Whetstone]]

* [[Windows System Assessment Tool]], included with Windows Vista and later releases, providing an index for consumers to rate their systems easily

* [[Worldbench]] (discontinued)

===Unusual benchmark===

* [[Will Smith Eating Spaghetti test]] - an informal test to determine the capabilities of [[text-to-video]] models.

=== Others ===

* [[AnTuTu]] – commonly used on phones and ARM-based devices.

* [[Byte Sieve]] - originally tested language performance, but widely used as a machine benchmark as well.

* [[Creative Computing Benchmark]] – Compares the [[BASIC]] programming language on various platforms. Introduced in 1983.

* [[Geekbench]] – A cross-platform benchmark for Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS and Android.

* [[iCOMP (index)|iCOMP]] – the Intel comparative microprocessor performance, published by Intel

* [[Khornerstone]]

* [[Novabench]] - a computer benchmarking utility for Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux

* [[Performance Rating]] – modeling scheme used by AMD and Cyrix to reflect the relative performance usually compared to competing products.

* [[Rugg/Feldman benchmarks]] - one of the earliest microcomputer benchmarks, from 1977.

* [[SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark|SunSpider]] – a browser speed test

* [[UserBenchmark]] - PC benchmark utility

* [[VMmark]] – a virtualization benchmark suite.

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== Further reading ==

* {{cite book |editor1-first=Jim |editor1-last=Gray |title=The Benchmark Handbook for Database and Transaction Systems |edition=2nd |publisher=Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Inc |series=Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems |year=1993 |isbn=1-55860-292-5 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/benchmarkhandboo00jimg }}

* {{cite book|first1=Bert|last1= Scalzo|first2=Kevin|last2= Kline|first3= Claudia|last3= Fernandez|first4= Donald K. |last4=Burleson|first5=Mike|last5=Ault|author5-link=Mike Ault |year=2007|title=Database Benchmarking Practical Methods for Oracle & SQL Server|publisher= Rampant TechPress|isbn =978-0-9776715-3-3}}

*{{cite book|editor1-first=Raghunath|editor1-last=Nambiar|editor2-first= Meikel|editor2-last=Poess|title=Performance Evaluation and Benchmarking|publisher= Springer|year=2009| isbn =978-3-642-10423-7}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Benchmark (Computing)}}

[[Category:Benchmarks (computing)| ]]

[[Category:Hardware testing]]