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Straight from the source

Eric Hale
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 |

Keep them coming!

Eric Hale
By Eric Hale
on January 31, 2013

Questions and comments have continued to come in since the Webinar last week. Here are a few of them:

  • How long are results valid? For a reviewer like us, we need to know that we can reuse results for a reasonable length of time. There is a tension between keeping results stable and keeping the benchmark current enough for the results to be relevant. Historically, HDXPRT allowed at least a year between releases. Based on the feedback we’ve received, a year seems like a reasonable length of time.
  • Is HDXPRT command line operable? (asked by a community member with a scripted suite of tests) HDXPRT 2012 is not, but we will consider adding a command line interface for HDXPRT 2013. While most casual users don’t need a command line interface, it could be very valuable to those of us using HDXPRT in labs.
  • I would be hesitant to overemphasize the running time of HDXPRT. The more applications it runs, the more it can differentiate things and the more interesting it is to those of us who run it at a professional level. If I could say “This gives a complete overview of the performance of this system,” that would actually save time. This comment was a surprise, given the amount of feedback we received saying that HDXPRT was too large. However, this gets to the heart of why we all need to be careful as we consider which applications to include in HDXPRT 2013.

If you had to miss the Webinar, it’s available at the BenchmarkXPRT 2013 Webinars page.

We’re planning to release the HDXPRT 2013 RFC next week. We’re looking forward to your comments.

Eric

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Posted in Benchmark metrics, Benchmarking, HDXPRT, HDXPRT workloads |

Some good questions

Eric Hale
By Eric Hale
on January 24, 2013

On Tuesday, we had a Webinar for the BenchmarkXPRT community. This Webinar covered the material that Bill would have given in individual presentations at CES. As such, it was an overview of the XPRT family.

The Webinar was well attended. We will be posting the slides and the recording of the Webinar online soon. However, we got some good questions, and thought we’d share our responses with you.

How will updates to TouchXPRT, and other benchmarks, affect results? We will avoid affecting results as much as possible. However, when updates do affect results, we will disclose the effect and the testing we performed to verify it.

Will we provide a way for benchmark users to talk to each other about support issues, perhaps via OpenBlog? We had envisioned the benchmark forums providing this opportunity. However, we are very happy to look into ways to make community communication easier and more effective.

Do you provide company memberships, as opposed to individual memberships? Not currently, although we will certainly look into this. We have no formal voting mechanism, as SPEC and some other organizations have. We may get there one day, but it’s not currently an issue. If your concern is about paying multiple membership fees, contact us, and we’ll work with you to avoid that.

In HDXPRT, can you select the CPU or GPU for video conversion and control the quality of the conversion? We have not investigated this. HDXPRT installs the applications using the default settings. However, because HDXPRT installs the applications in a separate step from running the test, it might be possible to manually change the benchmark settings and then run HDXPRT. We will be looking into this and reporting on it going forward.

How does the server influence WebXPRT results? We have run WebXPRT hosted on different servers in different locations, and seen little influence on the results. However, as part of preparing the WebXPRT general release, we will characterize and document the influence of the server.

Feel free to let us know what you think about these or any other topics. As I said earlier, we’ll be posting the whole Webinar online soon.

Eric

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Posted in Benchmarking, Benchmarks in general, CES, HDXPRT, TouchXPRT, WebXPRT |

Unchecked ambition

Bill Catchings
By Bill Catchings
on January 17, 2013

With 10 applications and five scenarios, HDXPRT 2012 is the most ambitious version of HDXPRT ever. However, as we said in the blog post of the same name, There is such a thing as too much. We heard that message from you as well: HDXPRT 2012 is too big. At 11 GB, we can’t make it available for download, and it won’t fit on a single DVD.

It also takes longer to use than many of you would like. The installation takes a couple of hours, and each iteration takes 2 to 3 hours. Because a valid run of HDXPRT 2012 comprises three iterations, getting a single result takes all day.

As we work to reduce the size of HDXPRT 2013, we’re being careful. While we need to shrink the benchmark and its running time, we want to be sure that we don’t compromise its essential value. As part of this process, we’re looking at both the selection of applications and the ways we can reengineer the scenarios.

If you have ideas about HDXPRT 2012 that you haven’t sent yet, now is a good time to do that. We’ll be sending out the HDXPRT 2013 RFC in the next couple of weeks. Once it’s out, we will look forward to hearing your comments.

I also wanted to mention that as we had to cancel CES at the last minute, we’re planning to do a Webinar next week (Tuesday, January 22) to cover the material we planned to present there. We’ll send out an email later this week with more details.

Bill

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Posted in BenchmarkXPRT, CES, HDXPRT, HDXPRT 2013, HDXPRT Development Community benefits, Let us know your thoughts |

The umbrella is open

Eric Hale
By Eric Hale
on January 11, 2013

Last week, we told you that we were going to be reorganizing the XPRT benchmarks under the BenchmarkXPRT umbrella. We’ve now taken a big step forward. The BenchmarkXPRT.com Web site is live.

BenchmarkXPRT.com is now the one place to go for news about all the benchmarks. When you visit the HDXPRT site, you’ll notice that the TouchXPRT and WebXPRT links are gone. The HDXPRT.com site is now specific to HDXPRT, and so matches the TouchXPRT.com and WebXPRT.com sites.

As part of this effort, we have also created a new Facebook page and Twitter feed for BenchmarkXPRT and they are already active. However, so that no one misses any important information, we will redundantly post the news to the old HDXPRT page and tweet to the old HDXPRT account until April 1.

The next step in the process will be converting the existing HDXPRT Development Community memberships to be BenchmarkXPRT Development community memberships. The new memberships will work like the ones you have now. However, you’ll also have the ability to follow specific benchmarks. That means that any time there’s news related to a specific benchmark, you’ll be notified. In the next couple of days, we will send an email to the members explaining this in more detail and giving the specific date of the cut over.

We will also be renaming the HDXPRT forums to be BenchmarkXPRT forums, and reorganizing the forums themselves.

As we’ve said before, this new organization better fits with the reality now, and gives us flexibility for the future. Who knows how when the family might grow again?

Eric

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Posted in BenchmarkXPRT, HDXPRT, Let us know your thoughts, Principled Technologies |

Busy start to a new year

Eric Hale
By Eric Hale
on January 5, 2013

I hope everyone had a great holiday, and that you are looking forward to a wonderful 2013!

Since the last blog post, more reviews using WebXPRT and TouchXPRT have appeared.

Use of the benchmarks is growing!

As we mentioned in the blog post The newest member of the family, we are we are reorganizing the XPRT family of benchmarks under the umbrella of BenchmarkXPRT. The next step is bringing the BenchmarkXPRT page on-line. That is happening Monday. BenchmarkXPRT.com is now the place to go for the latest news about all the benchmarks. As part of this reorganization, the What’s New section of the HDXPRT home page will be moving.

We will also be creating a new Facebook page and Twitter feed. We think this new organization will better suit the needs of the community as we go forward.

LATE BREAKING NEWS: We unfortunately will not be able to be at CES. We will be holding Webinars soon to tell you all the latest developments and listen to your opinions.

Eric

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Posted in CES, TouchXPRT, WebXPRT |

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