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The '''Whetstone benchmark''' is a [[Benchmark (computing)|benchmark]] for evaluating the power of [[computer]]s. It was first written in [[Algol 60]] in [[1972]] at the [[National Physical Laboratory]] in the [[United Kingdom]] and derived from statistics on program behaviour gathered on the [[KDF9]] computer, using a modified version of its Whetstone Algol 60 compiler. The program's behavior replicated that of a typical KDF9 scientific program and was designed to defeat compiler optimizations that would have adversely affected the accuracy of this model.
'''Welcome!'''
The Whetstone benchmark originally measured computing power in units of ''kilo-Whetstone Instructions per seconds'' (kWIPS). Results for a variety of languages, compilers and system architectures have been obtained and modern workstations typically achieve more than 1 000 000 kWIPS (1 [[Giga]]-WIPS).
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The Whetstone benchmark primarily measures the [[floating-point arithmetic]] performance. A similar benchmark for integer and string operations is the [[Dhrystone]].
[[User:-Ril-|<nowiki>~~</nowiki><nowiki>~~</nowiki>]] ( [[User:-Ril-/BadBoy|!]] | [[User:-Ril-/Newgate|?]] | [[User:-Ril-/Nissa|*]] ) 09:58, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
The Whetstone and Dhrystone have recently found some usage in the [[Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing]] project which uses them for its benchmarks.
== ThatExternal thing you didlinks ==
Hi there Riumplus. Just saw that you "''switched [the barnstar image I uploaded] from truecolor to palette-based encoding to losslessly shrink the file size by 44%.''" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Barnstar-Medicine.png#filehistory] Well, I've no idea what that entailed, but it sure sounds like it was a good thing to do and I'm glad you did it. Thanks!—[[User:Encephalon|<font color=000066>Encephalon</font>]] | [[User talk:Encephalon|<font color=red><sup>ζ</sup></font>]] 12:13:19, 2005-08-26 (UTC)
* [http://www.cse.clrc.ac.uk/disco/Benchmarks/whetstone.shtml CCLRC: The Whetstone Benchmark]
== References ==
* H. J. Curnow and B. A. Wichman, ''A Synthetic Benchmark'', Computer Journal, Vol. 19 #1, February 1976
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