01/07/2018: SPEC relies on contributors outside of its membership
to help develop far-reaching benchmark suites such as SPEC CPU2017.
Here's the story
of one of those contributors.
12/13/2017: SPECapc released an updated version of the
Maya 2017 benchmark
that improves the way multi-sample anti-aliasing (MSAA) is measured.
Results from V1.0.6 of SPECapc for Maya 2017 are not comparable to
those from previous versions of the benchmark.
10/17/2017: The research and industrial/experience paper submission deadline
for the ICPE 2018 conference to be held April 9-13,
2018 in Berlin, has been extended to October 25, 2017.
Please see the important dates
for abstract and paper submission and notification deadlines.
10/12/2017: The SPECjbb2015 benchmark has been updated
to version 1.01. This update adds support for Java SE 9. OSG members can
download the V1.01 update; other
licensees are entitled to a free upgrade. SPEC will be retiring SPECjbb2015
V1.0 in January 2018, after which time all result submissions must be made with
V1.01.
09/27/2017: SPEC's Application Performance Characterization (SPECapc) project
group has released all-new performance evaluation software for systems running
Autodesk Maya 2017 3D animation software. SPECapc
for Maya 2017 software includes nearly 80 individual tests that reflect the
processes used to model, animate and render scenes within the application. The new
benchmark was developed by SPECapc in cooperation with Autodesk, which supplied seven
new graphics models and scenes.
08/14/2017: With the release of SPEC CPU2017,
SPEC will be retiring SPEC CPU2006 in January 2018. Full details on
the retirement schedule can be found here.
07/11/2017: Michael Hines, a senior engineer at DigitalOcean, is not
your typical user of a SPEC CPU benchmark suite. He's not a high-end server
user, a hardware system vendor, a researcher or an independent software vendor
(ISV). Then why does he find the SPEC CPU2017 benchmark suite critically
important to his work? Find
out here.
06/27/2017: SPEC's High-Performance Group (SPEC/HPG) has released
a new version of its SPEC ACCEL software that adds
a suite of OpenMP applications for measuring the performance of systems
using hardware accelerator devices and supporting software. Other major
updates in SPEC ACCEL 1.2 include the ability to add and change directives
within the OpenMP and OpenACC suites to expose more parallelism for peak
performance testing, and revised applications in the OpenACC suite to allow
for successful GNU compiling.
06/20/2017: SPEC announces the release of
SPEC CPU2017, an all-new
version of the benchmark suite for evaluating
compute-intensive performance across a wide range
of hardware systems. CPU2017 contains 43 individual
benchmarks organized into four suites. Among the
new features
are the option to use OpenMP for several of the SPECspeed 2017
benchmarks and the ability to optionally measure and report
power statistics. OSG members can download
the ISO starting immediately.
06/08/2017: The 9th ACM/SPEC International Conference
on Performance Engineering (ICPE 2018) has issued a
call for contributions.
Topics of interest include: performance modeling of software; performance and software
development processes/paradigms; performance measurement, monitoring and analysis;
benchmarking; run-time performance management; power and performance, energy efficiency;
performance modeling and evaluation in different environments and application domains; and
other topics related to performance of software and systems. ICPE2018 will take place
April 9-13, 2018 in Berlin, Germany.
06/05/2017: SPECpower has released a new
version of PTDaemon, the software that allows power measurement devices to be
incorporated into performance evaluation software. PTDaemon 1.8.1 includes new support
for Windows USBTMC using Keysight drivers and the Hioki PW3335 (single channel) power
measurement device. Users of SPECpower_ssj2008 and the SERT suite are encouraged to
download and apply the update.
05/23/2017: SPEC's Research Group has issued a
call for nominations
for the Kaivalya Dixit Distinguished Dissertation Award recognizing outstanding
doctoral dissertations in the field of computer benchmarking, performance evaluation,
and experimental system analysis. The award is open to dissertations that have
been defended between October 2016 and September 2017.
05/22/2017: In an exclusive interview,
Klaus-Dieter Lange, SPECpower chair, discusses the origin of SERT, the challenges of
creating an international standard, the prospect of continued improvements in server
efficiency, and his own personal growth in leading a diverse group of technologists.
05/22/2017: SPEC's High-Performance Group (HPG) is offering
rewards of up to $5,000 and a free benchmark license for application code and datasets
accepted under its new SPEC MPI Accelerator
Benchmark Search Program. Applications that make it through the entire search
program will be incorporated into a new benchmark currently called SPEC MPI ACCEL. The
new benchmark will combine components of the current
SPEC MPI and
SPEC ACCEL benchmark suites. (Note: The
search program is not open to any employees or contractors of any SPEC participating
organizations and their immediate families.)
04/18/2017: Version 2.0 of the Chauffeur Workload
Development Kit (WDK) has been released. This major release is based on the
SERT 2.0 infrastructure and includes
significant enhancements to the hardware detection, customization options of
generating HTML reports, and developer documentation. It has now reduced memory
requirements for the Director when signing results files and reduced the size
of the result output for large systems or clusters. There is also an updated
list of supported operating systems including Ubuntu (14.04 LTS and 16.04 LTS)
as well as current versions of Windows Server, RHEL, SLES, AIX, and Solaris.
OSG members can download the ISO here.
04/04/2017: OSG's SFS subcommittee is now known as the
Storage committee.
04/04/2017: A patch
has been released for SPECvirt_sc2013 which
addresses an issue encountered when running the webserver workload with TLS
encryptions which would cause any result to be marked as invalid. Any
submissions using TLSv1, TLSv1.1, or TLSv1.2 encryptions for the webserver
workload must use this patch.
03/28/2017: SPEC announces the release of the
Server Efficiency Rating Tool (SERT) 2.0,
which adds a single-value metric, reduces runtime, improves automation and testing,
and broadens device and platform support. Designed to be simple to configure and
use via a comprehensive graphical user interface, the SERT suite uses a set of
synthetic worklets to test discrete system components such as processors, memory
and storage, providing detailed power consumption data at different load levels.
01/03/2017: SPEC Cloud IaaS 2016 V1.1 is now
available. This update includes bug fixes and usability improvements, libcloud support for
easy adapter development, and OpenStack driver updates. Starting January 23, 2017, all result
submissions must be made using version 1.1 and version 1.0 will be retired.
12/09/2016: Holiday Submission/Review Schedule: SPECvirt_sc2013 results received for Dec. 14 review
will not complete their review cycle until Jan. 4, 2017. Submissions received for Dec. 21 and Dec. 28 review
cycles will not start review until Jan. 4 2017.
09/21/2016: SPECvirt_sc2013 has been updated
to version 1.1. This update includes
added support for TLSv1, TLSv1.1 and TLSv1.2 with several new ciphers, an updated PTDaemon
version, and documentation updates. OSG members can download
the ISO here.
08/24/2016: The SPEC Graphics Performance Characterization Group (SPECgpc) has
released an updated version of its
SPECviewperf benchmark that features a new Autodesk 3ds Max viewset, Microsoft Windows
10 support, and GUI and reporting improvements. The benchmark runs under the 64-bit
versions of Microsoft Windows 7 and Windows 10. Results from V12.1 remain comparable
to those from V12.0.1 and V12.0.2.
08/17/2016: The SPEC JMS 2007 benchmark will be
retired on November 23, 2016.
New result submissions will be accepted through November 9, 2016. After that time,
no further submissions will be accepted and technical support will no longer be offered.
