Author Archives: Eric Hale

Designated Drivers

on August 29, 2013

As we mentioned in last week’s blog On to the next thing, we have seen some problems running HDXPRT 2012 on the Windows 8.1 preview, build 9460. To date, the failures we’ve seen have been in Media Espresso’s Power Director on systems using third and fourth generation Intel Core processors.

We are happy to say that HDXPRT 2012 runs fine on the preview of Windows 8.1 when using the Windows 8.1 Preview Beta Graphics Driver. We are continuing to test, but things are looking good. You can get the graphic driver at communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-21232. We tested with version 15.33.10.3214, which is the latest version available as I am writing this.

If you see problems when running HDXPRT 2012, please let us know.

As I said last week, we are pushing forward on the development of HDXPRT 2013. We are looking forward to releasing a preview to the community in the next few weeks.

Eric

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Posted in HDXPRT, HDXPRT 2012, Windows 8.1 |

On to the next thing

By Eric Hale

on August 22, 2013

Last week, we released MobileXPRT 2013 to the public and published it as a free app on Google Play. On Monday, we will release the source code to the community. It hasn’t been long since we released the source code for MobileXPRT CP 1.1, but it’s an important part of the community model that the source for the current version is available to the community.

While we were putting the finishing touches on MobileXPRT, we’ve been hard at work on HDXPRT 2013. The feedback on HDXPRT made it clear that the benchmark should be smaller, faster, and easier to install. We have been working to keep all the value of the benchmark, and update the workloads to reflect current usage, even as we slim it down.

Speaking of HDXPRT, as we mentioned in The show is in previews, HDXPRT 2012 has issues running on Windows 8.1. However, we have had some success getting HDXPRT to run on Windows 8.1 by using beta drivers from Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA. We are still investigating this, and hope to have a general workaround for this soon.

There’s lots more stuff in the pipeline. Exciting times ahead!

Eric

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Posted in HDXPRT 2012, HDXPRT 2013, MobileXPRT 2013 source, Windows 8.1 |

Time to Play

By Eric Hale

on August 15, 2013

As Bill said in MobileXPRT 2013 lives!, we released MobileXPRT 2013 to the public on Monday. Since that time, we have published MobileXPRT as a free app in the Google Play Store. You can find it by searching for “mobilexprt” or you can get it here. Downloading the app from the store simplifies the installation, but in all other regards, it’s the same application that you can download from the MobileXPRT site.

We will make the source for the release available to the community in a few days.

We have some MobileXPRT results on the Web site. Some of these results are from our own testing and some are from published articles like this one from Tom’s Hardware. We will be adding more results from devices we test and looking for more articles as time goes on.

We’d love to add your results as well. You can find out how to submit your results here. If you have a blog or publish your own reviews, send us the link. If we include your results, we will link back to your site.

Now on to the next great thing!

Eric

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Posted in Android, MobileXPRT |

Fragments

By Eric Hale

on August 1, 2013

The folks over at OpenSignal have created some pretty impressive visualizations of how fragmented the Android marketplace is. Pictures like that are a little daunting as we head to the public release of MobileXPRT 2013. However, the benchmark is looking pretty stable. Since we released MobileXPRT CP1.1 back in June, we have not encountered any problem configurations.

That includes our first encounter with the recently released Android 4.3. We tested MobileXPRT 2013 CP 1.1 on a Nexus 7 running Android 4.3. The benchmark ran with no problem. Here are the scores, along with scores from the same device running Android 4.2.2.

	Android 4.2.2	Android 4.3
MobileXPRT performance	116	120
MobileXPRT user experience	97	98

Of course, WebXPRT 2013 ran on Android 4.3 as well. If you’re curious, here are the scores.

	Android 4.2.2	Android 4.3
WebXPRT	183	185

While the upgrade did not have a big effect on the score in the case of the Nexus 7, we will need to test on more devices before we can make a definitive statement about the effect of Android 4.3.3 on performance.

Eric

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Posted in MobileXPRT, WebXPRT |

There’s always something new to measure

By Eric Hale

on July 25, 2013

Scientific Reports published an article this month showing that electrically charged insects, such as honey bees, can cause some spider webs to deform. The effect, as pictures in the report show, is that the webs can literally reach out a short distance to snag the passing insect. It’s a cool optimization for the web, and one no one had measured before.

Like the scientists in the report, we are always looking for interesting things to measure. Even as we head toward the public release of MobileXPRT, we’re already thinking ahead to the next versions of all the XPRT benchmarks. This week, I’d like to share a few of the things we have been thinking about, based on conversations with folks (both within and outside of the Development Community) for WebXPRT.

Enhancing the benchmark UI to provide better feedback about the test progress
Extending coverage to other Web technologies such as Web Workers and CSS 3
Extending the workload categories to include other areas, such as productivity
Enabling WebXPRT to be used as a platform-independent battery life test

There are just some of the ideas we’ve been talking about. Which of these excite you? Even better, do you have any cool ideas of your own? Either way, post to the forums or e-mail BenchmarkXPRT@principledtechnologies.com

Eric

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Posted in Benchmarking, BenchmarkXPRT, Collaborative benchmark development, WebXPRT |

Oh no, not another learning experience!

By Eric Hale

on July 18, 2013

We are in the process of submitting TouchXPRT 2013 to the Microsoft App Store, and we are learning a lot in the process. Of course, we knew to create a Live ID for the process. However, we were surprised by the verification for the corporate account. We had to produce a lot of documentation, including our articles of incorporation, respond to phone calls and e-mail verifications, and agree to a pretty stringent legal agreement. Given the legal weight attached to the Live ID, we keep its information restricted to a minimum number of people.

Because the packages you upload to the store must be digitally signed by the Live account associated with the app store registration, a designated representative has to rebuild the package from the development team before we can submit it.

When we were preparing TouchXPRT 2013 for the app store, we restructured it to download its content after it’s installed. This allows the package in the app store to be smaller. Hosting the content was not a problem, but we did run into a couple of issues.

The first time we submitted TouchXPRT 2013 to the app store, they rejected it because they thought it was incomplete. We added a note to the testers about the download, and that resolved that issue. Next time, of course, we have learned to value of very specific notes to the testers.

The second hurdle was that, now that TouchXPRT downloaded its data, it qualified as a “network aware” application. All network aware applications must have a privacy policy and the privacy policy must be available from the application setting on the charms menu. Simply having the privacy policy was not enough. We have fixed this and submitted the application again.

The privacy policy is very simple: “TouchXPRT 2013 uses the network only to download content for its performance tests. TouchXPRT does not report any information to Principled Technologies or any other entity.” You can find it here.

In the next few weeks, we will be releasing MobileXPRT 2013 to the general public. We are already preparing it to submit to Google Play. Hopefully, things will go smoother this time!

Eric

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Posted in MobileXPRT, TouchXPRT |

Author Archives: Eric Hale

Designated Drivers

On to the next thing

Time to Play

Fragments

There’s always something new to measure

Oh no, not another learning experience!

Check out the other XPRTs: