SPEC calls for benchmark contributions

Up to $5,000 and free benchmark software offered for accepted code

WARRENTON, Va - The Standard Performance Evaluation Corp. (SPEC) is offering rewards of up to $5,000 and a free benchmark license for application code and datasets accepted under its benchmark search program. Applications that make it through the entire search program will be incorporated into the next major version of the SPEC CPU suite.

SPEC CPU benchmarks are among the most widely used measures of computing power. They are quoted in new computer announcements and used to evaluate design alternatives for hardware and software technologies under development. The benchmarks provide performance metrics for comparing systems on a known compute-intensive workload, with emphasis on the system's processor, memory hierarchy and compiler.

Real, parallelized applications

SPEC seeks benchmarks that are derived from real applications, but it is not necessary for an application developer to contribute an entire commercial code base. A more reasonable submission might be the compute-intensive portion of such an application, without its user interface. SPEC is particularly interested in applications that take advantage of multi-core processors and parallel, multi-threaded computing.

SPEC's current CPU2006 suite includes the following applications: AI game theory, bioinformatics, chemistry, compilers, interpreters, data compression, fluid dynamics, physics, speech recognition, video processing and weather prediction. Proposed applications are not limited to these areas, however. The primary selection factor in all application categories is how closely the entry reflects the state of the art in its field. It is also important that the application can be made compute-bound and portable across different hardware architectures and operating systems.

Deadline: November 11, 2009

Proposals for new SPEC CPU benchmarks will be accepted from now until November 11, 2009 at midnight U.S. Pacific Standard Time. For more information on the program and an entry form, visit http://www.spec.org/cpu/cpuv6.

About SPEC

SPEC is a non-profit organization that establishes, maintains and endorses standardized benchmarks to evaluate performance for the newest generation of computing systems. Its membership comprises more than 80 leading computer hardware and software vendors, educational institutions, research organizations, and government agencies worldwide. For more information, visit www.spec.org or contact the SPEC office by phone: 540-349-7878, fax: 540-349-5992, or email: info@spec.org.