Category: Collaborative benchmark development

The XPRTs at IDF15 Shenzhen

on April 23, 2015

We recently traveled to Shenzhen, China to anchor Principled Technologies’ booth in the IDF15 Shenzhen technology showcase. Over 60 companies set up displays to interact with approximately 2,000 attendees, and it was a great opportunity for us to connect with innovators in one of the fastest-growing technology hubs in the world.

We spent most of our time talking with people about the benefits of the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community, demonstrating the XPRTs on our display systems, and describing the scope and abilities of each XPRT. Many of the people we talked with showed great interest in the XPRTs’ commitment to developing easy-to-use benchmarks that measure performance and battery life while doing everyday tasks.

Of course, we also spent a good deal of free time exploring Shenzhen and nearby Hong Kong. If you ever get the opportunity to visit either of these dynamic cities, you won’t be disappointed!

The IDF15 Shenzhen technology showcase floor. Our booth is just to the right of the gray-and-white balloon. The booming Shenzhen skyline, including the soon-to-be-second-tallest building in the world.

If we missed you at IDF15, or you have questions or comments about the Benchmark XPRT Development Community, feel free to contact us.

Justin

Posted in BenchmarkXPRT development community, Chinese, Collaborative benchmark development, IDF, Principled Technologies, Simplified Chinese, Trade Shows |

Time for a merger of equals?

By Eric Hale

on April 16, 2015

As I said last week, we’re working on the design document for the new version of MobileXPRT, and we expect to have it out in the next couple of weeks. We have several ideas we’re pretty excited about.

One of the ideas we’ve been considering is merging BatteryXPRT and MobileXPRT into a single benchmark. This would be similar to what we’ve done with CrXPRT, which has tests for both battery life and performance. As with CrXPRT, you’d be able to run either test, and you could get performance and battery life for a device in a single day using a single benchmark.

If we as the community do decide to merge the benchmarks, there will be a lot to think about. For example, MobileXPRT is unaware whether it’s connected to the Internet, while BatteryXPRT not only detects how it’s connected, but selects the appropriate Airplane mode or Network-Wifi Mode test. And, of course, we’d have to figure out what to call it.

What do you think about merging the two benchmarks? Would it make your life simpler? What other features would you like to see in the new MobileXPRT? This is the time to speak up!

Eric

Posted in Battery life, BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android, BenchmarkXPRT development community, Collaborative benchmark development, CrXPRT, Future of performance evaluation, MobileXPRT |

A couple of things

By Eric Hale

on April 2, 2015

We’ve heard about a couple of issues this week. The HDXPRT 2014 Convert Videos test uses the MediaEspresso application and requires hardware acceleration be configured. On some systems, this setting is not configuring automatically, which may result in lower scores. We’re working on a solution, but in the meantime there’s an easy workaround.

We’ve also found that some Chromebooks report extremely low battery use, as low as 0%, for the first couple iterations of the CrXPRT battery life test. This can cause CrXPRT to report results with a very wide confidence interval, with an interval greater than 15%. We’re looking at ways to detect and compensate for this. However, if you see results with a very wide confidence interval, we recommend that you use the rundown test.

In other news, we’ve been talking about Intel Developer Forum 2015 – Shenzhen for weeks, and the time is finally here! Bill and Justin get on the plane tomorrow. If you’d like to talk about the XPRTs, or any of PT’s other offerings, Bill and the team would be happy to meet with you!

Eric

Posted in Collaborative benchmark development, CrXPRT, Google Chrome, HDXPRT, IDF |

Finally!

By Eric Hale

on March 26, 2015

We’re releasing the community preview of WebXPRT 2015 tomorrow. We’re very excited that it’s finally here. In the past few weeks, we’ve discussed some of the new features in WebXPRT 2015, such as test automation, its new and improved tests, and its Chinese UI. We think you’re really going to enjoy the new WebXPRT.

The design document (login required) specifies that WebXPRT will contain an experimental workload. That workload is not in the community preview, although we plan for it to be in the general release. However, because any experimental workloads are not included in the overall score, this will not affect any results you generate.

We’re also investigating the use of the JavaScript navigator object to improve system disclosure, but we are still determining if we can get reliable enough information to display. So this information is not displayed in the community preview.

As with all the BenchmarkXPRT community previews, we’re not putting any publication restrictions on this preview release. Test at will, and publish your findings. We guarantee the results for the community preview will be comparable to results from the general release.

If you’re not a community member, join us and check out the new WebXPRT.

Eric

Posted in Automation, BenchmarkXPRT development community, Chinese, Collaborative benchmark development, Community Preview, WebXPRT, WebXPRT 2015 |

More power, more control

By Eric Hale

on March 19, 2015

As I said last week, the community preview for WebXPRT 2015 is coming up soon. One of the changes that will be exciting to anyone who does a lot of testing is that we made it simpler to automate WebXPRT tests.

WebXPRT 2015 will let you automatically select any set of tests you want to run. However, as always, you must run the entire suite of tests to get an overall score. Although the community preview will not include any experimental tests, the automation includes control for those future tests as well.

You may choose from several output formats: HTML table, XML, and CSV, or you can download the results as a text file.

Using the automation is simple: you just append the desired test parameters to the end of the URL. The format allows you to mix and match a lot of options, while still being very concise. The details will be in the release notes.

As people who test a lot of devices, we are very excited about this new capability.

Eric

Posted in Automation, BenchmarkXPRT development community, Collaborative benchmark development, Community Preview, Future of performance evaluation, Performance benchmarking, WebXPRT, What makes a good benchmark? |

Polishing the chrome

By Eric Hale

on February 5, 2015

Early next week, we’ll be releasing an update for CrXPRT that addresses a couple of issues. First, the individual workload scores were not always discarding outliers correctly, which could have had a small effect on those scores. The update handles outliers correctly. Because the overall score is calculated separately from the individual workload scores, this change does not affect the overall score or battery life score, and results from previous builds are still comparable.

The update also checks the duration for each battery life test iteration. This helps detect conditions that could invalidate the test, such as someone manually putting a test system to sleep.

Finally, the update checks between iterations to see if the Chromebook is plugged in during the test. If so, CrXPRT will report an error and stop the test. This can potentially save time that would otherwise be lost on an invalid run.

These are small changes, but they will help make CrXPRT a more robust benchmark.

In other news, we’ve been asking members of the community if they would care to share their experiences and thoughts on the blog. We’re delighted that people are interested, and we’ve already received our first guest post that we’ll be publishing in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, if you’d like to write a post, or just want to share your thoughts on the XPRTs, please let us know!

Eric

Posted in Battery life, Chrome OS, Chromebooks, Collaborative benchmark development, CrXPRT |

Category: Collaborative benchmark development

The XPRTs at IDF15 Shenzhen

Time for a merger of equals?

A couple of things

Finally!

More power, more control

Polishing the chrome

Check out the other XPRTs: