Category: Collaborative benchmark development

Back to the source

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 |

Presentation XPRT

By Bill Catchings

on May 9, 2013

A few weeks ago, the Mobile PC Extended Battery Life Working Group (EBL WG) asked me to give a presentation about the BenchmarkXPRT benchmarks during one of their meetings. The group started a little over 10 years ago and is an industry organization focusing on achieving all-day battery life in mobile PC platforms.

There was a catch, of course. The meeting was this week, in Taipei. Luckily, we were able to grant the request without racking up any frequent flier miles—thanks to the wonders of technology, I was able to give the presentation remotely.

Taipei is 12 hours ahead of us here on the East Coast, so I made arrangements to give the presentation last night at 9:30 pm, making it 9:30 am the next day there—the first thing on the agenda for today. (Oh, the vagaries of time zones!)

During the one-hour session we talked about HDXPRT, TouchXPRT, WebXPRT and MobileXPRT (which, for the moment, is how we internally refer to the XPRT formerly known as PhoneXPRT). And of course, we discussed the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community. It went well, and we had some great questions from the group.

It went so well, in fact, that I’d love to do it again. I like talking about the development community and the XPRTs, and would welcome the chance to present to other groups. If you are interested or know an organization that is, you can email us at benchmarkxprtsupport@principledtechnologies.com.

Bill

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Posted in BenchmarkXPRT, BenchmarkXPRT development community, Collaborative benchmark development, HDXPRT, MobileXPRT, PhoneXPRT, TouchXPRT |

The HDXPRT 2013 RFC is here

By Eric Hale

on February 14, 2013

We released the RFC, or request for comments, for HDXPRT 2013 yesterday. Our major objective with the RFC is to get your feedback. Your feedback played an important part in developing HDXPRT 2012, and we are hoping it plays an even larger role in developing HDXPRT 2013.

The RFC includes our thoughts and ideas for the design of HDXPRT 2013 based on the many conversations we’ve had over the six months since the current version of HDXPRT debuted. Indeed, during the last few weeks, we shared some of the feedback we received during and after the Webinar in January.

At this point, nothing is written in stone. Now is the time to let us know where you agree and where you disagree. For example, the current proposal drops support for Windows 7. Do you have an opinion about this? Let us know.

The RFC is available for Development Community members at http://www.principledtechnologies.com/hdxprt/forum/hdxprt2013RFC.php. Our goal is to get your feedback by March 6. We’d like as much of the feedback as possible to appear on the forums to help stimulate discussion. However, if you prefer to send in your comments via email, please send them to BenchmarkXPRTsupport@hdxprt.com.

Of course, you can send comments to us any time, and you don’t have to limit yourself to HDXPRT! Do you have thoughts about TouchXPRT or WebXPRT? They are both moving rapidly toward their official releases. Do you have thoughts about other benchmarks we should consider developing? Send those, too!

Eric

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Posted in Collaborative benchmark development, HDXPRT 2013, HDXPRT 2013 RFC, HDXPRT Development Community benefits, HDXPRT development process |

Straight from the source

By Eric Hale

on February 7, 2013

One of the pillars of our community model of benchmark development is making the source available. As we’ve said many times, we believe that doing so leads to better benchmarks.

Today we released the source for HDXPRT 2012. As with previous versions of HDXPRT, the source is available only to community members, not to the general public. We apologize that it has taken so long. HDXPRT is complicated to build, and we wanted to have a simpler and more robust build process before we made the source available.

The source allows you to examine how HDXPRT is implemented and to try some experiments of your own. Because of the size of HDXPRT 2012, the source package does not include the applications or the data files for the workloads. By including only the benchmark source code and associated files, we could keep the package small enough to download. If you want to try some changes for experiments and test them, all you need to do is install HDXPRT 2012 from the distribution DVDs. The compilation instructions will tell you how to copy your modified executables over the shipping versions.

Community members can get instructions on how to download the source code here (registration required).

If you create something interesting while you’re experimenting, let us know! We’d love to have the community consider it for HDXPRT 2013.

Speaking of the community, we’ve sent T-shirts to all community members who’ve supplied their up-to-date mailing address. If you’re a community member who wants a shirt but hasn’t yet let us know, please e-mail benchmarkxprtsupport@principledtechnologies.com with your mailing address by February 15th.

Eric

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Posted in Collaborative benchmark development, HDXPRT, HDXPRT Development Community benefits, HDXPRT source code |

There is such a thing as too much

By Eric Hale

on December 6, 2012

There’s been a lot of excitement about TouchXPRT recently. However, we haven’t been ignoring HDXPRT. On November 9, we released a patch that lets HDXPRT support Windows 8. We’ve now integrated the patch into HDXPRT2012, so all copies of HDXPRT 2012 going forward will install on Windows 8 without the need for a separate step.

As promised, we will be releasing the source code for HDXPRT 2012. We anticipate having it available for community members by December 14.

During the comment period for HDXPRT, this message came through loud and clear: HDXPRT 2012 is too big and takes too long to run. So we are working hard to find the best way to reduce the number of applications and scenarios. While we want to make the benchmark smaller and faster, we want to make sure that HDXPRT 2013 is comprehensive enough to provide useful performance metrics for the greatest number of people.

We’re working toward having an RFC in late January that will define a leaner, meaner HDXPRT 2013, and will reflect the other comments we have as received as well. If you have thoughts about which applications and scenarios are most important to you, please let us know.

In other news, CES is coming in January, and Principled Technologies will be there! Once again, Bill is hoping to meet with as many of you in the Development Community as possible. We’ll have a suite at the Hilton and would love for you to come, kick back, and talk about HDXPRT, TouchXPRT, the future of benchmarks, or about the cool things you’ve seen at the show. (Bill loves talking about gadgets. Last year, he went into gadget overload!)

If you plan to be at CES, but are stuck working a booth or suite, let us know and Bill will try to stop by and say hi. Drop us an email at hdxrpt_CES@principledtechnologies.com and we will set up an appointment.

Finally, we’re really excited about the big changes at the Principled Technologies Web site. The new Web site gives us a lot of opportunities. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be looking at ways the Development Community can take advantage of them.

Eric

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Posted in Application-based benchmarks, Benchmarking, CES, Collaborative benchmark development, HDXPRT 2013, HDXPRT Development Community benefits, Principled Technologies, What makes a good benchmark?, Windows 8 | Tagged CES |

TouchXPRT in the fast lane

By Bill Catchings

on October 25, 2012

I titled last week’s blog “Putting the TouchXPRT pedal to the metal.” The metaphor still applies. On Monday, we released TouchXPRT 2013 Community Preview 1 (CP1). Members can download it here.

CP1 contains five scenarios based on our research and community feedback. The scenarios are Beautify Photo Album, Prepare Photos for Sharing, Convert Videos for Sharing, Export Podcast to MP3, and Create Slideshow from Photos.

Each scenario gives two types of results. There’s a rate, which allows for simple “bigger is better” comparisons. CP1 also gives the elapsed time for each scenario, which is easier to grasp intuitively. Each approach has its advantages. We’d like to get your feedback on whether you’d like us to pick one of those metrics for the final version of TouchXPRT 2013 or whether it makes more sense to include both. You’ll find a fuller description of the scenarios and the results in the TouchXPRT 2013 Community Preview 1 Design overview.

While you’re looking at CP1, we’re getting the source ready to release. To check out the source, you’ll need a system running Windows 8, with Visual Studio 2012 installed. We hope to release it on Friday. Keep your eye the TouchXPRT forums for more details.

Post your feedback to the TouchXPRT forum, or e-mail it to TouchXPRTSupport@principledtechnologies.com. Do you want more scenarios? Different metrics? A new UI feature? Let us know! Make TouchXPRT the benchmark you want it to be.

As I explained last week, we released CP1 without any restrictions on publishing results. It seems that AnandTech was the first to take advantage of that. Read AnandTech’s Microsoft Surface Review to see TouchXPRT in action.

We are hoping that other folks take advantage of CP1’s capability to act as a cross-platform benchmark on the new class of Windows 8 devices. Come join us in the fast lane!

Bill

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Posted in Benchmark metrics, Collaborative benchmark development, Touch-based benchmarking, Touch-based devices, TouchXPRT development process, TouchXPRT release cycle, TouchXPRT results |

Category: Collaborative benchmark development

Back to the source

Presentation XPRT

The HDXPRT 2013 RFC is here

Straight from the source

There is such a thing as too much

TouchXPRT in the fast lane

Check out the other XPRTs: