The Systems Performance Evaluation Co-operative’s new suite of integer performance CPU tests, as reported briefly (CI No 1,841), contains six benchmarks written in C, representing the following application areas: circuit theory, Lisp interpreter, logic design, text compression, spreadsheet and software development – the GNU compiler. They’re called, respectively, 008.espresso, 022.li, 023.eqntott, 026.compress, 072.sc and 085.gcc. The second suite, to evaluate floating point CPU performance, has 14 benchmarks, two written in C, the rest in Fortran – five of which are single-precision – representing circuit design, Monte Carlo simulation, quantum chemistry, optics, robotics, quantum physics, astrophysics, and other scientific and engineering problems. It has two kernel benchmarks. They’re dubbed 013.spice2g6, 015.doduc, 034.mdljdp2, 039.wave5, 047.tomcatv and 048.ora. There will be no single SPECmark rating as such, instead, integer and floating point performance will be known as SPECint and SPECfp – each the mean of the respective set of results. The 20 benchmarks double the number in SPEC Release 1, though several have been carried forward into Release 2. In addition, new benchmarks to measure overall system throughput, networking and disk input-output performance are being prepared for release this year and next. In its announcement SPEC reminds users that the best way of comparing the performance of different systems is to use the actual application on the machines. It proposes its benchmark suite only as a second alternative, where comparing application performance is not feasible. Furthermore it recommends that users study the profile of each individual benchmark, select one or more that are most representative of their environment, and compare systems based on their performance on these test(s). It says the floating point set will be best suited to comparing engineering systems, the integer suite for base CPU performance in commercial environments. The new benchmarks are priced at $425 for CINT92 – the integer set – and $575 for CFP92, the floating point suite: the two for $900. Existing customers can upgrade for $300 and $400 respectively, or $600 for both.
