Category: Performance benchmarking

The XPRT Women Code-a-Thon

on January 28, 2016

As Justin explained last week, we’ve resolved the issue we found with the TouchXPRT CP. I’m happy to say that the testing went well and that we released CP3 this week.

It’s been only three weeks since we announced the XPRT Weekly Tech Spotlight, and we already have another big announcement! Principled Technologies has joined with ChickTech Seattle to host the first ever XPRT Women Code-a-Thon! In this two-day event, participants will compete to create the best new candidate workload for WebXPRT or MobileXPRT. The workloads can’t duplicate existing workloads, so we are looking forward to seeing the new ideas.

Judges will study all the workloads and award prizes to the top three: $2,500 for first place, $1,500 for second place, and $1,000 for third place. Anyone interested can register here.

PT and the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community are committed to promoting the advancement of women in STEM, but we also win by doing good. As with the NCSU senior project, the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community will get some fresh perspectives and some new experimental test tools. Everyone wins!

So much has happened in 2016 and January isn’t even over yet. The year is off to a great start!

Eric

Posted in Benchmark metrics, BenchmarkXPRT, BenchmarkXPRT development community, Collaborative benchmark development, Future of performance evaluation, MobileXPRT, Performance benchmarking, TouchXPRT, TouchXPRT 2016, WebXPRT, What makes a good benchmark?, XPRT Weekly Tech Spotlight, XPRT Women Code-a-Thon |

TouchXPRT 2016 Community Preview 3 is available

By Eric Hale

on January 28, 2016

Today we are releasing TouchXPRT 2016 Community Preview 3 (CP 3). As we discussed in the blog, CP 3 resolves an issue reported on some systems, where the Create Slideshow test would take longer than expected to complete due to the output video not rendering correctly.

As with all community previews, TouchXPRT 2016 CP 3 is available only to community members. Members may download the preview from the TouchXPRT tab in the Members’ Area.

For more details about TouchXPRT 2016, please consult the release notes for further details (login required).

After you try out CP 3, please send us your comments. Either post them to the forum or mail them to BenchmarkXPRTsupport@principledtechnologies.com. If you send us information that’s relevant to the entire community, we may post an anonymous version of your comments to the forum.

Thanks for your participation!

Posted in BenchmarkXPRT development community, Collaborative benchmark development, Community Preview, Performance benchmarking, TouchXPRT, TouchXPRT 2016, TouchXPRT development process, TouchXPRT release cycle, Windows 10 |

TouchXPRT 2016 Community Preview 2 is available

By Eric Hale

on December 1, 2015

Today we are releasing TouchXPRT 2016 Community Preview 2 (CP 2). As we discussed in the blog, some systems with newer AMD graphics drivers have trouble rendering the Create Slideshow from Photos output video. CP 2 includes a validation feature that produces an error when this problem occurs. This is the only change from the first community preview.

As with all community previews, TouchXPRT 2016 CP 2 is available only to community members. Members may download the preview from the TouchXPRT tab in the Members’ Area.

For more details about TouchXPRT 2016, please consult the release notes for further details (login required).

After you try out CP 2, please send us your comments. Either post them to the forum or mail them to BenchmarkXPRTsupport@principledtechnologies.com. If you send us information that’s relevant to the entire community, we may post an anonymous version of your comments to the forum.

Thanks for your participation!

Posted in BenchmarkXPRT development community, Community Preview, Performance benchmarking, TouchXPRT, TouchXPRT 2016, TouchXPRT development process, Windows 10 |

Question we get a lot

By Eric Hale

on October 2, 2015

“How come your benchmark ranks devices differently than [insert other benchmark here]?” It’s a fair question, and the reason is that each benchmark has its own emphasis and tests different things. When you think about it, it would be unusual if all benchmarks did agree.

To illustrate the phenomenon, consider this excerpt from a recent browser shootout in VentureBeat:

While this looks very confusing, the simple explanation is that the different benchmarks are testing different things. To begin with, SunSpider, Octane, JetStream, PeaceKeeper, and Kraken all measure JavaScript performance. Oort Online measures WebGL performance. WebXPRT measures both JavaScript and HTML 5 performance. HTML5Test measures HTML5 compliance.

Even with benchmarks that test the same aspect of browser performance, the tests differ. Kraken and SunSpider both test the speed of JavaScript math, string, and graphics operations in isolation, but run different sets of tests to do so. PeaceKeeper profiles the JavaScript from sites such as YouTube and FaceBook.

WebXPRT, like the other XPRTs, uses scenarios that model the types of work people do with their devices.

It’s no surprise that the order changes depending on which aspect of the Web experience you emphasize, in much the same way that the most fuel-efficient cars might not be the ones with the best acceleration.

This is a bigger topic than we can deal with in a single blog post, and we’ll examine it more in the future.

Eric

Posted in Benchmark metrics, Benchmarking, Benchmarking computing devices, BenchmarkXPRT development community, Collaborative benchmark development, Performance benchmarking, Performance of computing devices, WebXPRT, What makes a good benchmark? |

MobileXPRT 2015 is here!

By Eric Hale

on August 28, 2015

Today, we’re releasing MobileXPRT 2015, the latest version of our tool for evaluating the performance of Android devices. The BenchmarkXPRT Development Community has been using a community preview for several weeks, but now anyone can run MobileXPRT and publish their results.

MobileXPRT 2015 is compatible with systems running Android 4.4 and above. It is a 64-bit app, but will work on both 32-bit and 64-bit hardware. The new release includes the same performance workloads as MobileXPRT 2013, but not the UX Tests. If you need the UX tests, MobileXPRT 2013 will continue to be available here.

MobileXPRT 2015 is available at MobileXPRT.com and on the Google Play store. Alternatively, you can download the app using either of the links below:

MobileXPRT 2015 application and test data, 243 MB (includes test data with the app)
MobileXPRT 2015 application only, 18 MB (downloads test data during installation)

After trying out MobileXPRT 2015, please submit your scores here and send any comments to BenchmarkXPRTsupport@principledtechnologies.com. We’re eager to hear and see how you’ll use this tool!

Posted in Android, BenchmarkXPRT development community, MobileXPRT, MobileXPRT 2015, Performance benchmarking, Performance testing on tablets |

Mystery solved

By Eric Hale

on July 2, 2015

As we mentioned a few weeks ago, the WebXPRT Local Notes test would not complete on recent builds of Windows 10 when using the Edge browser. Other browsers complete WebXPRT in recent Windows 10 builds without any problems.

We now know what is causing this behavior. The Local Notes test stores encrypted content in LocalStorage as UTF-16 character encoded Unicode strings. The encrypted content included values that are not considered valid characters in certain use cases. The current Edge implementation treats these characters as undefined and cannot store them. Other browsers may not have had an issue with the characters because of differences in the way they implement LocalStorage.

We’ve been able to work around this by using escape sequences for unsupported Unicode code points. Testing so far has not shown any perceptible change in results, so we believe that we will able to make this change to WebXPRT without compromising the comparability of the results.

Because this issue affects both WebXPRT 2013 and WebXPRT 2015, we’re planning to update both versions. We’ll let you know as soon as they are available.

If you’d like more details about this issue and the fix, please let us know.

Eric

Posted in Performance benchmarking, WebXPRT, WebXPRT 2015, What makes a good benchmark?, Windows 10 |

Category: Performance benchmarking

The XPRT Women Code-a-Thon

TouchXPRT 2016 Community Preview 3 is available

TouchXPRT 2016 Community Preview 2 is available

Question we get a lot

MobileXPRT 2015 is here!

Mystery solved

Check out the other XPRTs: