SPEC Seeks Applications and Workloads for Upcoming Benchmark

This is a quick news post, but one I’m making just in case anyone out there can help. Our good friends at SPEC are on the lookout for another company (or companies) to contribute to an upcoming workstation benchmark (likely SPECviewperf), and are in need of a workload that won’t require a license to the entire application that will still properly benchmark the software / scenario.

As with most of SPEC’s benchmarks, the goal here is to give users an easy benchmark to install but offer tests and metrics that those who deal with workstations can relate to. In return, SPEC says the benefits are vendor optimizations, marketing and exposure and of course, goodwill from customers. Part of the release:

GAINESVILLE, Va., January 4, 2012 – SPEC’s Graphics and Workstation Performance Group (SPEC/GWPG) is seeking applications, algorithms and workloads for a proposed workstation performance benchmark. Early participants in the workstation working group include AMD, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Intel and NVIDIA.

“We are looking to fill a gap by providing a benchmark that measures the performance of workstations running popular applications, but without requiring the full application and associated licensing to be installed on the system under test,” says Tom Fisher, chair of the working group. “The resulting benchmark would be easy to install and run, but still rigorous enough to provide meaningful, repeatable data for performance evaluation.”

Guidelines and benefits