Re: CPU synthetic benchmark

[Martin Spinassi <martins.listz@gmail.com>]

On Thu, 2010-10-14 at 20:28 -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:

> > The only problem with old code is that it might not compile with modern
> > GCC.
> 
> This is minor.  The bigger problem with benchmark code from the mid 90s
> is that all the floating point code targets the 80 bit x87 FPU and IEEE
> 754 data precision format.  A realistic FP performance test of modern
> x86 CPUs is going to use the 128 bit wide SIMD vector pipelines
> (SSE,2,3,4).  The performance difference between the two FPU pipelines
> is going to be huge, a factor of 3 at minimum and possibly up to a
> factor of 8 or more.  This is because the x87 FPU isn't pipelined and
> there are far fewer registers available, and it can't process arrays in
> a single instruction.
> 
> > Otherwise, the Byte Unix Benchmark, Dhrystone, Whetstone & LINPACK are
> > as (in)valid today as they were 30 years ago.
> 
> AFAIK, the first 3 of these you mention haven't been updated in well
> over a decade.  BYTE Magazine ceased publication in 1998.  The modern
> versions of LINPACK do take advantage of the SIMD pipelines in modern
> x86(64) CPUs so they are valid tests today.  The TOP 500 project uses
> parallel LINPACK results to rank the 500 fastest supercomputers in the
> world twice yearly, and the bulk of those systems use x86-64 CPUs.
> 
> The SPEC CPU tests at http://www.spec.org are the "default" industry
> standard for measuring CPU performance, however, the code is not open
> source, and a fee is required AFAIK to get access to it.
> 
> If you're really wanting to get real comparable performance numbers for
> your CPU, I'd suggest you simply browse the SPEC CPU results pages
> instead of attempting to run benchmarks on your system.  There are
> results published from multiple vendors systems for many/most CPU models.
> 
> http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/cpu2006.html
> 
> (note:  the above page is large and may take a while to load)
> 
> -- 
> Stan
> 

Thanks for your reply Stan.

I've checked spec, and yes, it's paid software. Then searched for
LINPACK. I'll try it right now. Hope it works with an AMD CPU as well.


My goal is to make some performance tests on virtualized hosts, using
qemu, kvm, xen hvm and xen parav., and see what results do I get.

Cheers,

Martin