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Default requirements for CloudXPRT results submissions

Over the past few weeks, we’ve received questions about whether we require specific test configuration settings for official CloudXPRT results submissions. Currently, testers have the option to edit up to 12 configuration options for the web microservices workload and three configuration options for the data analytics workload. Not all configuration options have an impact on testing and results, but a few of them can drastically affect key results metrics and how long it takes to complete a test. Because new CloudXPRT testers may not anticipate those outcomes, and so many configuration permutations are possible, we’ve come up with a set of requirements for all future results submissions to our site. Please note that testers are still free to adjust all available configuration options—and define service level agreement (SLA) settings—as they see fit for their own purposes. The requirements below apply only to results testers want to submit for publication consideration on our site, and to any resulting comparisons.


Web microservices results submission requirement

Starting with the May results submission cycle, all web microservices results submissions must have the workload.cpurequestsvalue, which lets the user designate the number of CPU cores the workload assigns to each pod, set to 4. Currently, the benchmark supports values of 1, 2, and 4, with the default value of 4. While 1 and 2 CPU cores per pod may be more appropriate for relatively low-end systems or configurations with few vCPUs, a value of 4 is appropriate for most datacenter processors, and it often enables CSP instances to operate within the benchmark’s max default 95th percentile latency SLA of 3,000 milliseconds.

In future CloudXPRT releases, we may remove the option to change the workload.cpurequests value from the config.json file and simply fix the value in the benchmark’s code to promote test predictability and reasonable comparisons. For more information about configuration options for the web microservices workload, please consult the Overview of the CloudXPRT Web Microservices Workload white paper.


Data analytics results submission requirement

Starting with the May results submission cycle, all data analytics results submissions must have the best reported performance (throughput_jobs/min) correspond to a 95th percentile SLA latency of 90 seconds or less. We have received submissions where the throughput was extremely high, but the 95th percentile SLA latency was up to 10 times the 90 seconds that we recommend in CloudXPRT documentation. High latency values may be acceptable for the unique purposes of individual testers, but they do not provide a good basis for comparison between clusters under test. For more information about configuration options with the data analytics workload, please consult the Overview of the CloudXPRT Data Analytics Workload white paper.

We will update CloudXPRT documentation to make sure that testers know to use the default configuration settings if they plan to submit results for publication. If you have any questions about CloudXPRT or the CloudXPRT results submission process, please let us know.

Justin

The Introduction to CloudXPRT white paper is now available!

Today, we published the Introduction to CloudXPRT white paper. The paper provides an overview of our latest benchmark and consolidates CloudXPRT-related information that we’ve published in the XPRT blog over the past several months. It describes the CloudXPRT workloads, choosing and downloading installation packages, submitting CloudXPRT results for publication, and possibilities for additional development in the coming months.

CloudXPRT is one of the most complex tools in the XPRT family, and there are more CloudXPRT-related topics to discuss than we could fit in this first paper. In future white papers, we will discuss in greater detail each of the benchmark workloads, the range of test configuration options, results reporting, and methods for analysis.

We hope that Introduction to CloudXPRT will provide testers who are interested in CloudXPRT with a solid foundation of understanding on which they can build. Moving forward, we will provide links to the paper in the Helpful Info box on CloudXPRT.com and the CloudXPRT section of our XPRT white papers page.

If you have any questions about CloudXPRT, please let us know!

Justin

The CloudXPRT results viewer is live

We’re happy to announce that the CloudXPRT results viewer is now live with results from the first few rounds of CloudXPRT Preview testing we conducted in our lab. Here are some tips to help you to navigate the viewer more efficiently:

  • Click the tabs at the top of the table to switch from Data analytics workload results to Web microservices workload results.
  • Click the header of any column to sort the data on that variable. Single click to sort A to Z and double-click to sort Z to A.
  • Click the link in the Source/details column to visit a detailed page for that result, where you’ll find additional test configuration and system hardware information and the option to download results files.
  • By default, the viewer displays eight results per page, which you can change to 16, 48, or Show all.
  • The free-form search field above the table lets you filter for variables such as cloud service or processor.

We’ll be adding more features, including expanded filtering and sorting mechanisms, to the results viewer in the near future. We’re also investigating ways to present multiple data points in a graph format, which will allow visitors to examine performance behavior curves in conjunction with factors such as concurrency and resource utilization.

We welcome your CloudXPRT results submissions! To learn about the new submission and review process we’ll be using, take a look at last week’s blog.

If you have any questions or suggestions for ways that we can improve the results viewer, please let us know!

Justin

The CloudXPRT Preview results submission schedule

A few weeks ago, we shared the general framework of the periodic results publication process we will use for CloudXPRT. Now that the CloudXPRT Preview is live, we’re ready to share more details about the results review group; the submission, review, and publication cycles; and the schedule for the first three months.

The results review group
The CloudXPRT results review group will serve as a sanity check and a forum for comments on each month’s submissions. All registered BenchmarkXPRT Development Community members who wish to participate in the review process can join the group by contacting us via email. We’ll confirm receipt of your request and add you to the review group mailing list. Any non-members who would like to join the review group can contact us and we’ll help you become community members.

The submission, review, and publication cycle
We will update the CloudXPRT results database once a month on a published schedule. While testers can submit results through the CloudXPRT results submission page at any time, two weeks prior to each publication date, we will close submissions for that review cycle. One week prior to each publication date, we will email details of that month’s submissions to the results review group, along with the deadline for sending post-publication feedback.

Schedule for the first three publication cycles
We will publish results to the database on the last business day of each month and will close the submission window at 11:59 PM on the business day that falls two weeks earlier (with occasional adjustments for holidays). The schedule will be available at least six months in advance on CloudXPRT.com.

The schedule for the first three cycles is as follows:

July
Submission deadline: Friday 7/17/20
Publication date: Friday 7/31/20
August
Submission deadline: Monday 8/17/20
Publication date: Monday 8/31/20
September
Submission deadline: Wednesday 9/16/20
Publication date: Wednesday 9/30/20

As a reminder, members of the tech press, vendors, and other testers are free to publish CloudXPRT results at any time. We may choose to add such results to our database on the monthly publication date, after first vetting them.

We look forward to reviewing the first batch of results! If you have any questions about CloudXPRT or the results submission or review process, let us know!

Justin

CloudXPRT is up next, and we’re thinking about how to handle results submission and publication

Last month, we provided an update on the CloudXPRT development process and more information about the three workloads that we’re including in the first build. We’d initially hoped to release the build at the end of April, but several technical challenges have caused us to push the timeline out a bit. We believe we’re very close to ready, and look forward to posting a release announcement soon.

In the meantime, we’d like to hear your thoughts about the CloudXPRT results publication process. Traditionally, we’ve published XPRT results on our site on a rolling basis. When we complete our own tests, receive results submissions from other testers, or see results published in the tech media, we authenticate them and add them to our site. This lets testers make their results public on their timetable, as frequently as they want.

Some major benchmark organizations use a different approach, and create a schedule of periodic submission deadlines. After each deadline passes, they review the batch of submissions they’ve received and publish all of them together on a single later date. In some cases, they release results only two or three times per year. This process offers a high level of predictability. However, it can pose significant scheduling obstacles for other testers, such as tech journalists who want to publish their results in an upcoming device review and need official results to back up their claims.

We’d like to hear what you think about the different approaches to results submission and publication that you’ve encountered. Are there aspects of the XPRT approach that you like? Are there things we should change? Should we consider periodic results submission deadlines and publication dates for CloudXPRT? Let us know what you think!

Justin

Improvements to the AIXPRT results table

Over the last few weeks, we’ve gotten great feedback about the kinds of data points people are looking for in AIXPRT results, as well as suggestions for how to improve the AIXPRT results viewer. To make it easier for visitors to find what they’re looking for, we’ve made a number of changes:

  • You can now filter results in categories such as framework, target hardware, batch size, and precision, and can designate minimum throughput and maximum latency scores. When you select a value from a drop-down menu or enter text, the results change immediately to reflect the filter.
  • You can search for variables such as processor vendor or processor speed.
  • The viewer displays eight results per page by default and lets you change this to 16, 48, or Show all.

 

The following features of the viewer, which have been present previously, can help you to navigate more efficiently:

  • Click the tabs at the top of the table to switch from ResNet-50 network results to SSD-MobileNet network results.
  • Click the header of any column to sort the data on that variable. One click sorts A-Z and two clicks sort Z-A.
  • Click the link in the Source column to visit a detailed page on that result. The page contains additional test configuration and system hardware information and lets you download results files.

 

We hope these changes will improve the utility of the results table. We’ll continue to add features to improve the experience. If you have any suggestions, please let us know!

Justin

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