Fundamentals of Quantitative Design and Analysis - Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach - page 39

of being a good predictor of relative performance of different embedded computers in the
ield. This lack of success is why Dhrystone, which EEMBC was trying to replace, is still used.
One of the most successful atempts to create standardized benchmark application suites
has been the SPEC (Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation), which had its roots in ef-
forts in the late 1980s to deliver beter benchmarks for workstations. Just as the computer in-
dustry has evolved over time, so has the need for different benchmark suites, and there are
now SPEC benchmarks to cover many application classes. All the SPEC benchmark suites and
their reported results are found at www.spec.org .
Although we focus our discussion on the SPEC benchmarks in many of the following sec-
tions, many benchmarks have also been developed for PCs running the Windows operating
system.
Desktop Benchmarks
Desktop benchmarks divide into two broad classes: processor-intensive benchmarks and
graphics-intensive benchmarks, although many graphics benchmarks include intensive pro-
cessor activity. SPEC originally created a benchmark set focusing on processor performance
(initially called SPEC89), which has evolved into its fifth generation: SPEC CPU2006, which
follows SPEC2000, SPEC95 SPEC92, and SPEC89. SPEC CPU2006 consists of a set of 12 integer
benchmarks (CINT2006) and 17 floating-point benchmarks (CFP2006). Figure 1.16 describes
the current SPEC benchmarks and their ancestry.