Online Computer Terms Dictionary - S

SPECmark

<benchmark> The average of a set of floating-point and integer SPEC benchmark results.

While the old average SPECmark89 has been popular with the industry and the press, SPEC has intentionally *not* defined an average "SPECmark92" over all CPU benchmarks of the 1992 suites (CINT92 and CFP92), for the following reasons: With 6 integer (CINT92) and 14 floating-point (CFP92) benchmarks, the average would be biased too much toward floating-point. Customers' workloads are different, some integer-only, some floating-point intensive, some mixed. Current processors have developed their strengths in a more diverse way (some more emphasizing integer performance, some more floating-point performance) than in 1989.

Some SPECmark results are available here.

See also SPECint92, SPECfp92, SPECrate_int92, SPECrate_fp92.

(1994-11-15)