Author Archives: Eric Hale

Has it only been a month?

on October 23, 2014

Operating systems will continue to evolve. Whether you consider that a promise or a threat, it’s a fact. Those who write software know the day will come when it’s running in an environment that did not exist when you wrote it. Sometimes you get lucky. WebXPRT, for example, has sailed through the release of new versions of Windows, Android, and iOS with no problems.

At other times, you have to take action. Last month, we alerted you to an issue MobileXPRT had with the pre-release version of Android L. We’ve released an update to MobileXPRT that resolves the issue with Android L.

The technical preview for Windows 10 became available to members of Microsoft’s Windows Insider Program on the first of October, and we’ve had a report that TouchXPRT does not run reliably on it. We are currently investigating this and will let you know the details as soon as we have them. We are checking HDXPRT on Windows 10 as well.

Of course, this is what previews are for. By addressing these issues now, the XPRTs will be ready to support these operating systems when they’re released to the public.

If you are running a preview version of Windows 10 and see a problem with any of our benchmarks, please let us know.

Operating systems continue to evolve. There’s already a new build of the Windows 10 preview. More are on the way. As they come, we will be there testing the XPRTs on them.

Eric

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Posted in Android, BenchmarkXPRT development community, HDXPRT, HDXPRT 2014, MobileXPRT, Windows 10 |

CrXPRT is here!

By Eric Hale

on October 15, 2014

Today we are releasing the CrXPRT 2014 Community Preview (CP1). As mentioned in a previous post, CrXPRT contains performance and battery life tests. The performance suite includes five scenarios utilizing Web browsing and JavaScript workloads, plus Portable Native Client (PNaCl) and WebGL-based scenarios. The battery life test incorporates all of the performance workloads and adds video playback, audio playback, and HTML5 gaming scenarios.

The battery life test in CP1 builds on the lessons we learned from developing BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android. In fact, we’ve been able to improve on the testing time. BatteryXPRT 2014 requires 5.5 hours to estimate battery life; CP1 can estimate battery life in only 3.5 hours. The battery test in CP1 still requires the device be put in developer mode, so we’re investigating the new Chrome OS battery status APIs. We hope these will make it possible to remove this restriction in a future release.

The estimates for battery life are generally pretty accurate. However, we have seen runs where the battery life results were much higher than expected. We are continuing to investigate this. If you see an anomalous result, please let us know. It is worth noting that the performance scores have been very consistent.

Because this is a community preview, you have to be a community member to download it. However, joining is very easy.

Check out the new CrXPRT, and let us know what you think!

Eric

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Posted in Battery life, BenchmarkXPRT development community, Chrome OS, Community Preview, CrXPRT, Performance benchmarking |

News from the factory floor

By Eric Hale

on October 9, 2014

As we mentioned last week, we have BatteryXPRT and MobileXPRT news:

Today, we’re releasing a new build of MobileXPRT 2013 at MobileXPRT.com and the Google Play store. This build addresses issues we saw when testing MobileXPRT on the beta build of Android L and the experimental ART runtime. The tests have not changed, and the scores are comparable with previous MobileXPRT 2013 scores.

Also, the BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android APKs are now available at BatteryXPRT.com. Up to now, only the full installer, including the content for the tests, was available on our Web site. The APKs are much smaller and allow you to download the test content during installation. For users who have trouble accessing the Google Play store, these APKs may make it easier to download the benchmark.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us at BenchmarkXPRTsupport@principledtechnologies.com.

Don’t forget: we’re releasing the community preview of CrXPRT next week!

Eric

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Posted in Android, BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android, Benchmarking, BenchmarkXPRT, BenchmarkXPRT development community, Chrome OS, Community Preview, CrXPRT, MobileXPRT |

Willkommen, 欢迎, welcome

By Eric Hale

on September 25, 2014

I was lucky enough to see the Broadway revival of Cabaret recently. Famously, the show’s opening song reflects the multilingual reality of Europe, requiring the character of the MC to constantly switch between German, French, and English.

That is increasingly our reality as well, although I’m thinking the MC had it easy. As the popularity of the XPRTs grow, we see their use in more languages around the world. I routinely see German, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew, Italian, Korean, and more. MobileXPRT is available on the ZOL app store in China, and, as I’m writing this, it’s been downloaded over 800 times!

We’re taking steps toward reflecting our own multilingual reality. For example, BatteryXPRT 2014 released with a Simplified Chinese UI. However, we have a long way to go before we can dance from one language to another.

Right now, CrXPRT only has an English UI. We would love it to have a Chinese UI before it goes community preview. More UIs would be even better! This is where having a large and diverse community is a great asset. If there’s a language you’d like to see supported, let us know. If you have the skills to help, we’d love to hear from you!

Eric

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Posted in BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android, Chinese, Chrome OS, CrXPRT, MobileXPRT |

Speaking the same language

By Eric Hale

on August 7, 2014

We count on our community members for so much: benchmark ideas, critiquing the benchmark designs, and testing the community previews. Community members with programming skills can vet the source code and submit code for inclusion in the benchmarks.

We love getting code from our members. However, people have widely differing opinions about what constitutes well-documented code. A lot of it comes down to taste, but it’s easier to read code when there are common conventions. So, we’ve put together a very brief description of some conventions that would make it easier to read your code.

Because the XPRT benchmarks are written in a number of languages, we don’t discuss the particulars of coding style in detail. We know that you know the best practices for your language of choice. However, when we’re reading code in C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, HTML5, XML, and more, it helps to have some points of reference.

So, check it out and let us know what you think. If you have code to share, please post on the forums or send us a message at BenchmarkXPRTsupport@principledtechnologies.com. We can’t wait to see what you’ve come up with!

Eric

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Posted in BenchmarkXPRT development community, Collaborative benchmark development, Source code, What makes a good benchmark? |

HDXPRT 2014 is here!

By Eric Hale

on July 24, 2014

Today we formally released HDXPRT 2014. The BenchmarkXPRT Development Community has been using a community preview for several weeks now. Now that we’ve released the benchmark, anyone may freely use it.

HDXPRT 2014 address the most common comments we had about the previous versions. It is a much smaller and faster benchmark. Instead of taking over five hours to get a result, as HDXPRT 2012 did, you can now install the benchmark and get a result in less than 2 hours. Also, because we were able to trim the benchmark size considerably, you can download HDXPRT directly from our site via a compressed install file. See the HDXPRT 2014 User Manual, available in the download and at HDXPRT.com, for installation instructions.

The HDXPRT 2014 source code will soon be available to the community. Remember that community members have access to the source code, but it is not available to the general public.

Although HDXPRT is much smaller and faster than HDXPRT 2013, we worked hard to make sure than we did not compromise the results. Give it a try and let us know what you think!

Eric

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Posted in BenchmarkXPRT development community, HDXPRT 2014, HDXPRT capabilities, HDXPRT Development Community benefits |

Author Archives: Eric Hale

Has it only been a month?

CrXPRT is here!

News from the factory floor

Willkommen, 欢迎, welcome

Speaking the same language

HDXPRT 2014 is here!

Check out the other XPRTs: