SPEC/GWPG Announces New Application Benchmark

By DE Editors

SPEC’s Graphics and Workstation Performance Group (SPEC/GWPG; Warrenton, VA) announced a range of upcoming benchmarks at the SIGGRAPH 2008 conference in Los Angeles. The new offerings will include a power-performance benchmark for workstations,  a new version of SPECviewperf, and new and updated application benchmarks. All are slated for release before spring of next year.

A still from the CATIA viewset for SPECviewperf 10.1, featuring the use of GL2 shaders and vertex buffer objects (VBOs).

An initial benchmark that measures power consumption in relation to performance for professional workstations is being submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for possible use in its V5.0 requirements for workstation ENERGY STAR qualification. A public release of a SPEC/GWPG power benchmark will follow.

The SPEC/GWPG power benchmark will incorporate workloads from the popular SPECviewperf benchmark for 3D graphics, as well as CPU workloads in areas such as rendering, computational fluid dynamics, scientific computing, and video encoding. Workloads will have the common attributes of scalability, open source, and portability across all major workstation platforms.

Version 10.1 of SPECviewperf, developed by SPEC’s graphics performance characterization (SPECgpc) working group, is expected before the end of the year. It will feature new functionality and a major update of viewsets, the testing data sets that are based on traces of graphical content in real applications.

Updates are being made to more than half of the viewsets, including those based on traces of 3ds Max, CATIA, EnSight, Maya, and Siemens PLM NX.

SPEC/GWPG’s Application Performance Characterization (SPECapc) project group has a list that includes performance evaluation software for workstations running Siemens PLM NX5, 3ds Max 2009, Maya 2009, and Lightwave 3D — these new and updated benchmarks are planned for fall and winter release. SPECapc also provides benchmarks for Pro/ENGINEER, Solid Edge, and SolidWorks.

For details, contact SPEC/GWPG.

Sources:  Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.