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The CrXPRT 2 Community Preview is available!

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on March 18, 2020

We’re excited to announce that the CrXPRT 2 Community Preview (CP) is now available! BenchmarkXPRT Development Community members can access the preview using a direct link posted on the CrXPRT tab in the XPRT Members’ Area (login required), where they will also find the CrXPRT 2 CP user manual.

You can find more information about the key differences between CrXPRT 2015 and CrXPRT 2 in last week’s blog entry. During the preview period, we allow testers to publish CP test scores, but CrXPRT 2 overall performance test scores and battery life measurements are not comparable to CrXPRT 2015 scores.

If you have any questions about CrXPRT 2 or joining the community, please let us know!

Justin

Posted in Battery life, benchmark, BenchmarkXPRT, BenchmarkXPRT development community, Chrome OS, Chromebooks, Community Preview, CrXPRT, Google Chrome | Tagged , , , , , , , , |

The CrXPRT 2 Community Preview is almost here!

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on March 12, 2020

We appreciate everyone’s patience and feedback during the CrXPRT 2 development process. We’re excited to say that we’re now wrapping up some final details and expect to release the Community Preview (CP) within the next week.

Here is a summary of the key differences between CrXPRT 2015 and CrXPRT 2:

  • As we mentioned a few weeks ago, CrXPRT 2 has a completely new UI in line with the functional and aesthetic themes we used for the latest versions of WebXPRT, MobileXPRT, and HDXPRT, with a focus on intuitive navigation.
  • The CrXPRT 2 performance test includes six of the seven workloads in CrXPRT 2015. Newer versions of Chrome can’t run the Photo Collage workload without a workaround, so we removed it from CrXPRT 2.
  • We updated the images in the Photo Effects and Face Detection workloads to reflect more contemporary file resolutions and sizes.
  • The CrXPRT 2 battery life test requires a full rundown, so you’ll need charge your device to 100 percent before you can start the test, and the length of battery life tests will vary according to the battery life of the systems under test.
  • We no longer require testers to enter luminance and audio measurements in order to run a battery life test.
  • We added a second video playback segment to each battery life iteration.


We allow testers to publish CP test scores, but CrXPRT 2 overall performance test scores and battery life measurements are not comparable to CrXPRT 2015 scores.

Only BenchmarkXPRT Development Community members will be able to download the CrXPRT 2 CP. Because the Chrome team stopped providing search and browse functions for hosted and packaged Chrome apps in the Chrome Web Store, members will need a direct link to access the app. Once the app is available, we’ll post that link, along with the CrXPRT 2 CP user manual, on the CrXPRT tab in the XPRT Members’ Area (login required). We’ll also send a message to the community and post a notice here in the blog.

If you have any questions about CrXPRT 2 or joining the community, please let us know!

Justin

Posted in Battery life, benchmark, BenchmarkXPRT, BenchmarkXPRT development community, Browser-based benchmarks, Chrome OS, Chromebooks, Community Preview, CrXPRT, Google Chrome, HDXPRT, MobileXPRT, Performance benchmarking, WebXPRT | Tagged , , , , , |

Thinking ahead to WebXPRT 4

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on March 5, 2020

It’s been about two years since we released WebXPRT 3, and we’re starting to think about the WebXPRT 4 development cycle. With over 529,000 runs to date, WebXPRT continues to be our most popular benchmark because it’s quick and easy to run, it runs on almost anything with a web browser, and it evaluates performance using the types of web technologies that many people use every day.

For each new version of WebXPRT, we start the development process by looking at browser trends and analyzing the feasibility of incorporating new web technologies into our workload scenarios. For example, in WebXPRT 3, we updated the Organize Album workload to include an image-classification task that uses deep learning. We also added an optical character recognition task to the Encrypt Notes and OCR scan workload, and introduced a new Online Homework workload that combined part of the DNA Sequence Analysis scenario with a writing sample/spell check scenario.

Here are the current WebXPRT 3 workloads:

  • Photo Enhancement: Applies three effects, each using Canvas, to two photos.
  • Organize Album Using AI: Detects faces and classifies images using the ConvNetJS neural network library.
  • Stock Option Pricing: Calculates and displays graphic views of a stock portfolio using Canvas, SVG, and dygraphs.js.
  • Encrypt Notes and OCR Scan: Encrypts notes in local storage and scans a receipt using optical character recognition.
  • Sales Graphs: Calculates and displays multiple views of sales data using InfoVis and d3.js.
  • Online Homework: Performs science and English assignment tasks using Web Workers and Typo.js spell check.

What new technologies or workload scenarios should we add? Are there any existing features we should remove? Would you be interested in an associated battery life test? We want to hear your thoughts and ideas about WebXPRT, so please tell us what you think!

Justin

Posted in AI, benchmark, Benchmark metrics, Benchmarking, BenchmarkXPRT, Browser-based benchmarks, Collaborative benchmark development, Cross-platform benchmarks, image classification, JavaScript, Performance benchmarking, WebXPRT, WebXPRT 3, What makes a good benchmark? | Tagged , , , |

CloudXPRT development news

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on February 27, 2020

Last month, Bill announced that we were starting work on a new data center benchmark. CloudXPRT will measure the performance of modern, cloud-first applications deployed on infrastructure as a service (IaaS) platforms—on-premises platforms, externally hosted platforms, and hybrid clouds that use a mix of the two. Our ultimate goal is for CloudXPRT to use cloud-native components on an actual stack to produce end-to-end performance metrics that can help users determine the right IaaS configuration for their business.

Today, we want to provide a quick update on CloudXPRT development and testing.

  • Installation. We’ve completely automated the CloudXPRT installation process, which leverages Kubernetes or Ansible tools depending on the target platform. The installation processes differ slightly for each platform, but testing is the same.
  • Workloads. We’re currently testing potential workloads that focus on three areas: web microservices, data analytics, and container scaling. We might not include all of these workloads in the first release, but we’ll keep the community informed and share more details about each workload as the picture becomes clearer. We are designing the workloads so that testers can use them to directly compare IaaS stacks and evaluate whether any given stack can meet service level agreement (SLA) thresholds.
  • Platforms. We want CloudXPRT to eventually support testing on a variety of popular externally hosted platforms. However, constructing a cross-platform benchmark is complicated and we haven’t yet decided which external platforms the first CloudXPRT release will support. We’ve successfully tested the current build with on-premises IaaS stacks and with one externally hosted platform, Amazon Web Services. Next, we will test the build on Google Cloud Hosting and Microsoft Azure.
  • Timeline. We are on track to meet our target of releasing a CloudXPRT preview build in late March and the first official build about two months later. If anything changes, we’ll post an updated timeline here in the blog.

If you would like to share any thoughts or comments related to CloudXPRT or cloud benchmarking, please feel free to contact us.

Justin

Posted in benchmark, Benchmark metrics, Benchmarking, Cloud, CloudXPRT, Collaborative benchmark development, container scaling, Datacenter, Future of performance evaluation, Hosted cloud, Hybrid cloud, IaaS, On-premise, Servers, web microservices | Tagged , , , , , , , |

HDXPRT 4: Troubleshooting an issue with the Convert Videos workload

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on February 20, 2020

Yesterday, we received a report that an HDXPRT 4 tester encountered an error message during the Convert Videos workload. During the workload, HDXPRT uses HandBrake 1.2.2 and CyberLink MediaEspresso 7.5 to convert multiple videos to formats optimized for mobile phones.

The error message reports that the video files did not load correctly:

We apologize for the inconvenience that this causes for HDXPRT testers. We’re troubleshooting to determine the cause of the issue and will let the community know as soon as we identify a reliable solution. If you have any insight into this issue, or have encountered any other error messages during HDXPRT testing, please feel free to contact us!

Justin

Posted in benchmark, BenchmarkXPRT, HandBrake, HDXPRT, HDXPRT 4, MediaEspresso, Performance benchmarking, Video | Tagged , , , , |

The AIXPRT source code is now public

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on February 13, 2020

This week, we have good news for AIXPRT testers: the AIXPRT source code is now available to the public via GitHub. As we’ve discussed in the past, publishing XPRT source code is part of our commitment to making the XPRT development process as transparent as possible. With other XPRT benchmarks, we’ve only made the source code available to community members. With AIXPRT, we have released the source code more widely. By allowing all interested parties, not just community members, to download and review our source code, we’re taking tangible steps to improve openness and honesty in the benchmarking industry and we’re encouraging the kind of constructive feedback that helps to ensure that the XPRTs continue to contribute to a level playing field.

Traditional open-source models encourage developers to change products and even take them in new and different directions. Because benchmarking requires a product that remains static to enable valid comparisons over time, we allow people to download the source code and submit potential workloads for future consideration, but we reserve the right to control derivative works. This discourages a situation where someone publishes an unauthorized version of the benchmark and calls it an “XPRT.”

We encourage you to download and review the source and send us any feedback you may have. Your questions and suggestions may influence future versions of AIXPRT. If you have any questions about AIXPRT or accessing the source code, please feel free to ask! Please also let us know if you think we should take this approach to releasing the source code with other XPRT benchmarks.

Justin

Posted in AI, AIXPRT, BenchmarkXPRT, BenchmarkXPRT development community, Collaborative benchmark development, Cross-platform benchmarks, GitHub, Open development, Open Source, Performance benchmarking, Source code | Tagged , , , |

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