Category: WebXPRT

The name game

on June 5, 2014

In Something shiny, we discussed the leading contender in our search for new benchmark ideas, a benchmark tailored especially for the Chrome OS, and we’ve been looking at what workloads would make sense.

As we said, the ability to measure battery life would be useful. That’s not easy in the Chrome environment. We think we may be able to do it, but the Chromebook may have to be in developer mode. Even so, we can leverage what we’ve learned from BatteryXPRT to get a reliable estimate of battery life in less than a working day.

Measuring performance, however, is a must. We’ve been looking at the existing WebXPRT workloads as well as other applications, such as education apps, online games, HD video playback, music playback, and more. We’re also looking for areas where using native client execution makes sense, such as higher-resolution photo editing.

In addition, we’re thinking about what we might call this benchmark. ChromeXPRT would be obvious, but probably wouldn’t pass Google’s naming restrictions.

Do you have ideas for the benchmark’s name? Are there Chrome-based benchmark workloads you’d love to see? Let us know at BenchmarkXPRTsupport@principledtechnologies.com!

Eric

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Posted in Chrome OS, Collaborative benchmark development, Future of performance evaluation, WebXPRT |

Something shiny

By Eric Hale

on May 22, 2014

As I mentioned in Looking for the next big thing, we’ve received some ideas for benchmarks recently. While there were several good ideas, the one that rose to the top of the list was a benchmark for Chrome-based devices.

For the past year or so, Chromebooks have been the fastest-growing segment of the PC market, so there’s a lot of interest. Given the rising profile of Chromebooks, a Chrome OS benchmark seems like a good fit with the existing XPRTs.

We’ve just started batting around ideas about what a Chrome OS benchmark might look like. Because the browser is the interface, WebXPRT is the natural place to start. However, WebXPRT runs on all platforms. We would like a Chrome benchmark to consider Chrome‑specific technologies like Google Native Client. If possible, it would also be great to get the battery life as well as performance.

Those are a few of our ideas. Do you have ideas about what you would like to see in a Chrome OS benchmark? If so, what would you consider most important for it to include? Let us know at benchmarkxprtsupport@principledtechnologies.com!

And remember, we’re always looking for new ideas. If there’s a benchmark you’d love to see, let us know.

Eric

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Posted in Collaborative benchmark development, Future of performance evaluation, Google Chrome, WebXPRT, What makes a good benchmark? |

More grease, more tracks

By Eric Hale

on March 27, 2014

We’re always looking for ways to make it easier for people to use the benchmarks and interact with the community. I wrote about a new form for suggesting new benchmarks last week. However, we are not stopping there.

Although the community previews for TouchXPRT 2014 and BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android have been out for a few weeks, we’ve continued to improve them before their general releases. For example, we mentioned in TouchXPRT CP1 that we would continue making changes to the UI.

Taking a cue from WebXPRT 2013, the upcoming general releases of TouchXPRT 2014 and BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android will have a button in the UI for submitting results. This will make it easier for you to submit your results to be approved for publication on the PT Web site.

Although there’s not much time left before the general releases of these benchmarks, it’s not too late to send in your ideas. Even if we can’t use your suggestions in this release, we may be able to use them in the future. Let us know what you think by posting to the forum or emailing us at BenchmarkXPRTsupport@principledtechnologies.com.

Eric

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Posted in BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android, Collaborative benchmark development, Community Preview, Let us know your thoughts, TouchXPRT, TouchXPRT 2014, WebXPRT |

It’s always worth asking

By Eric Hale

on March 6, 2014

Last week, one of our community members asked for a couple of enhancements to WebXPRT. They wanted WebXPRT to be easier to automate, and they made two specific requests:

Add debug/result logs
Add the ability to start the test without UI interactions, by using a specific URL or a command line

This is a great example of why we put so much emphasis on the community. We have tried to make the BenchmarkXPRT benchmarks easy to use, but we don’t always face the same testing demands you do. If there’s anything we can do to make these tools more valuable, please let us know by posting on the forums or e-mailing us at benchmarkxprtsupport@principledtechnologies.com.

We are adding those abilities to the upcoming WebXPRT 2014 community preview. Speaking of the community preview, we have been working hard on it, and in the next few weeks, we’ll be talking about what will be in it.

Keep those requests coming!

Eric

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Posted in BenchmarkXPRT development community, Collaborative benchmark development, Community Preview, WebXPRT, What makes a good benchmark? |

Happy New Year everyone!

By Eric Hale

on January 2, 2014

We hope you had a great holiday.

Bill and Mark are preparing to go to CES this year. We’re really excited about the chance to talk with folks because there’s so much to talk about.

It’s been a great year for the XPRTs. At the start of 2013, HDXPRT 2012 was the only XPRT benchmark available to the public. Now four XPRT benchmarks are available through our Web site. Take a look at some of the milestones from this banner year:

We released MobileXPRT 2013, TouchXPRT 2013 and WebXPRT 2013 to the public.
To reflect the expanded offerings, the HDXPRT Development Community evolved into the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community.
We radically redesigned the Web site.
The greater XPRT offerings let us test more varied devices, including the Amazon Kindle Fire HDX, Barnes & Noble Nook HD+, NVIDIA Shield, XBOX ONE, and PS4.
We released four videos.

And 2014 is going to be an even bigger year! We are very close to releasing the TouchXPRT 2014 community preview and are in the comment period for a new battery life test—and we are only two days into the year!

If you will be at CES, this is a great time make yourself heard. E-mail benchmarkxprtsupport@principledtechnologies.com if you’d like to chat with Bill and Mark about what you’d like to see in the coming year.

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Posted in BenchmarkXPRT development community, CES, MobileXPRT, TouchXPRT, WebXPRT |

Winding down the year

By Eric Hale

on December 19, 2013

We have a few things we need to touch on before the year ends.

In TouchXPRT 2014, we described some of the changes to TouchXPRT. We had hoped to have the Consumer Preview out in December, but we need to do a little more work on it. However, the TouchXPRT 2014 CP is coming after first of the year, and it’s worth the wait!

For the first time ever, we found a situation that caused WebXPRT to fail. We got a report of an iPhone 5s failing. We found that the user was using the private browsing mode. The WebXPRT Offline Notes test uses HTML5 local storage to sync and store notes locally. Safari and iOS Safari don’t support setting the HTML 5 localStorage property when using private browsing mode. Not using private browsing fixes the problem.

Remember that we are in the comment period for the new battery test. Community members should definitely check out the battery test RFC.

As we mentioned before, Bill and Mark are going to CES. If you’d like to chat, send an e-mail to benchmarkxprtsupport@principledtechnologies.com.

This is the last blog of 2013. The next post will be on January 2.

It’s been a great year. Thank you all.

Happy holidays!

Eric

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Posted in Battery life, Collaborative benchmark development, TouchXPRT, WebXPRT |

Category: WebXPRT

The name game

Something shiny

More grease, more tracks

It’s always worth asking

Happy New Year everyone!

Winding down the year

Check out the other XPRTs: