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Paper: The SPEC benchmarks

Published: 01 December 1991 Publication History

Abstract

This paper characterizes problems with popular benchmarks used to measure system performance and describes the history, structure, mission, future, and workings of an evolving standard in characterizing systems performance. Systems Performance Evaluation Cooperative (SPEC) represents an effort of major computer companies to create a yardstick to measure the performance of computer systems. This paper compares results of three architectures with traditional performance metrics and metrics developed by SPEC. It discusses strengths and weaknesses of SPEC and warns users about the dangers of single number performance characterization.

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Published In

cover image Parallel Computing
Parallel Computing  Volume 17, Issue 10-11
December, 1991
241 pages

Publisher

Elsevier Science Publishers B. V.

Netherlands

Publication History

Published: 01 December 1991

Author Tags

  1. Benchmarks
  2. SPEC
  3. performance metric
  4. performance results
  5. system performance

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