SPEC Updates Us On Its Forthcoming Graphics & Workstation Benchmarks

SPEC’s Graphics and Workstation Performance Group has taken advantage of SIGGRAPH to fill us in on what we can expect to see from it this year, and overall, there’s quite a bit to look forward to.

To start, SPECgpc will issue a much-needed update to SPECviewperf, adding 4K support. At the moment, the current version of the benchmark tops out at 1080p, which admittedly is quite modest given the prevalence of higher-resolution displays (if not 4K, at least 1440p). This update will also add a ninth viewset, for Autodesk’s 3ds Max (a Maya viewset is already included.)

SPEC’s SPECapc Maya Benchmark, Soon To See An Update

In 2013, SPEC introduced one of its most grueling standalone benchmarks, SPECwpc. Taking many hours to run, SPECwpc tests for both general performance and specific scenarios, like media and entertainment, energy, and life sciences. With a new major update, the benchmark will improve scalability measurement for workstations that sport a large number of cores, and at the same time, it’ll take better advantage of solid-state storage.

SPECapc will also be seeing some great updates soon, with a new benchmark for Siemens’ NX as well as Autodesk’s Maya (I am particularly keen on integrating the latter into our testing).

SPEC notes that its current GWPG members include AMD, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Intel, Micron, Lenovo, NVIDIA, and VMware.