> Hmmm.... we recently responded to a government RFP where they
> "require"
> runs on the hardware from the spec suite.
>
> [soap box]
>
> This is counter productive IMO as the spec suite really doesn't do
> much for you in terms of meaningful performance measurements. Does
> about the same as Linpack/HPL. Yeah, some people argue otherwise, and
> compiler vendors and hardware OEMs/resellers work really hard to put
> out
> great benchmark data. I don't believe such data is terribly
> meaningful,
> and customers who rely upon it for purchase decisions may wind up
> making
> decisions in part based upon "data" which has little intrinsic value
> to
> the tasks at hand.
>
>
> The most important benchmark is the one that uses the same code you
> use
> in the way you are going to use it. Anything else is an entropy
> generator.
>
> [/soap box]
While I wholeheartedly agree that you should use the code you are going
to run as a benchmark, that is not always practical. One thing SPEC
does nicely that Linpack/HPL does not is to make sure that it is a
"general purpose" platform. I can imagine lots of machine
configurations that one might not want that would scream on Linpack/HPL
and would not run SPEC...
Keith
--
Keith D. Underwood Scalable Computing Systems
Senior Member of Technical Staff Sandia National Laboratories
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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