Category: Collaborative benchmark development

Broadening our appeal

on October 31, 2013

As I mentioned last week, we’ve asked the PT design team to help improve the XPRT benchmarks. I’m learning a lot working with them. As someone who’s been involved with benchmarking a long time, it can be a shock to realize that there are people who think “ms” is a magazine, “geomean” has something to do with the environment, and “UX” sounds like it would be a great name for a band. But the fact is that most consumers don’t need to know any of these terms, so our benchmarks shouldn’t rely on them, either.

This collaboration already paying off. The PT design team rewrote the MobileXPRT FAQ, making it much more extensive, accessible, and fun to read. We think the new FAQ is greatly improved, and it’s certainly more informative. We’ll be upgrading the FAQs for the other benchmarks in the near future.

Our efforts are going far beyond FAQs. Data presentation, graphics, the basic UI design philosophy—everything is on the table. Let us know what you think by emailing benchmarkxprtsupport@principledtechnolgies.com or by posting on the forums.

Eric

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Posted in BenchmarkXPRT, BenchmarkXPRT development community, Collaborative benchmark development, Let us know your thoughts, MobileXPRT |

Sprucing things up

By Eric Hale

on October 17, 2013

A major goal of the BenchmarkXPRT benchmarks is to be useful to the people who buy consumer devices, most of whom do not have experience running benchmarks. As these people have started discovering the benchmarks, we’ve been learning a lot about how to make the benchmarks clearer and easier to use.

We’re working on a lot of things: making the data clearer and easier to understand, giving better feedback about what the benchmark is doing, making the controls clearer and easier to find, making the documentation more accessible, and more. We also need to make the UIs of the benchmarks more unified, so that the benchmarks appear to be the members of the same family.

Because we take this effort very seriously, we are involving the PT design team in a more integral way. These are the same people who spearheaded the Web site redesign and produced the BenchmarkXPRT videos. (See their most recent video here.)

We’ll keep you informed about the design process as we go. If you have complaints or suggestions, it’s not too late. Please post to the forums or send an email to benchmarkxprtsupport@principledtechnologies.com.

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Posted in BenchmarkXPRT, BenchmarkXPRT development community, Collaborative benchmark development, Principled Technologies |

Look how we’ve grown!

By Eric Hale

on October 10, 2013

We talk a lot about the community model, but perhaps not enough about the community itself. I was looking at our growth over the past few months, and struck by how far we have come this year. We don’t reveal our members’ personal information, but I would like to share some statistics with you.

The community has grown by over 40 percent in 2013. Members are affiliated with 49 organizations, representing chip makers, OEMs, software vendors, and the press. Some members work outside technology, in fields such as engineering, finance, and communications.

Back in April, we blogged about setting up a second WebXPRT host to help with download speeds in China, so it’s no surprise that the community has also spread across the world. Because we don’t require detailed information from community members, I don’t know how many countries are represented. However, the members with whom I’ve had personal contact come from at least four continents.

Thanks to all our community members for making it a great year so far. If you’ve not joined yet, now is a great time. Remember that members see the previews of the benchmarks, and the 2014 versions are coming.

Here’s looking forward to greater growth in the future.

Eric

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

Staying out in the open

By Eric Hale

on October 3, 2013

Back in July, Anandtech publicized some research about possible benchmark optimizations in the Galaxy S4. Yesterday, Anandtech published a much more comprehensive article, “The State of Cheating in Android Benchmarks.” It’s well worth the read.

Anandtech doesn’t accuse any of the benchmarks of being biased—it’s the OEMS who are supposedly doing the optimizations. I will note that none of the XPRT benchmarks are among the whitelisted CPU tests. That being said, I imagine that everyone in the benchmark game is concerned about any implication that their benchmark could be biased.

When I was a kid, my parents taught me that it’s a lot harder to cheat in the open. This is one of the reasons we believe so strongly in the community model for software development. The source code is available to anyone who joins the community. It’s impossible to hide any biases. At the same time, it allows us to control derivative works. That’s necessary to avoid biased versions of the benchmarks being published. We think the community model strikes the right balance.

However, any time there is a system, someone will try to game it. We’ll always be on the lookout for optimizations that happen outside the benchmarks.

Eric

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Posted in Android, Benchmark metrics, Benchmarks in general, BenchmarkXPRT development community, Collaborative benchmark development, MobileXPRT |

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 |

Back to the source

By Eric Hale

on July 4, 2013

Last week, we released MobileXPRT CP1.1.This week, we released the source code for MobileXPRT CP1.1. You can download it here (login required). The procedure for building it is the same as for the previous CP. As we discussed in Kick the tires. Look under the hood, it’s easy to set up the environment and all the necessary software is free.

We believe that one of the most important things we can do is make the source code available. We believe that increasing the transparency of the benchmarking process and stimulating the participation of industry players and the public in the definition, development, understanding, and auditing of the benchmarks will lead to better benchmarks.

You may be thinking “Then why not open source the benchmark?” The short answer is that we need to make sure that the results from any version of our benchmarks are ones you can trust. You can watch Bill discuss this in BenchmarkXPRT: It’s not a benchmark.

We believe that the community model—which gives you total visibility into the benchmark, allows you to run your own experiments and contribute to future versions of the benchmark, and still protects the integrity of the results—strikes the right balance.

If you’re not a member, please consider joining. It’s easy.

If you are a member, check out the code and tell us how it can be better!

Eric

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Posted in BenchmarkXPRT development community, Collaborative benchmark development, MobileXPRT 2013 source, Video |

Category: Collaborative benchmark development

Broadening our appeal

Sprucing things up

Look how we’ve grown!

Staying out in the open

There’s always something new to measure

Back to the source

Check out the other XPRTs: