SPECint

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SPECint is a computer benchmark specification for CPU's integer processing power. It is maintained by the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC).

SPECint is the integer performance testing component of the SPEC test suite. The first SPEC test suite, CPU92, was announced in 1992. It was followed by CPU95, CPU2000, and CPU2006. The latest standard of SPECint is CINT2006 (aka SPECint2006).

CPU2006 is a set of benchmarks designed to test the CPU performance of a modern server computer system. It is split into 2 components, the first being CINT2006, the other being CFP2006 (SPECfp), for floating point testing.

For a fee, SPEC distributes source code files to users wanting to test their systems. These files are written in a standard programming language, which is then compiled for each particular CPU architecture and operating system. Thus, the performance measured is that of the CPU, RAM, and compiler, and does not test I/O, networking, or graphics.

SPEC defines a base runtime for each of the 12 benchmark programs. For SPECint2006, that number ranges from 1000–3000 seconds. The timed test is run on the system, and the time of the test system is compared to the reference time, and a ratio is computed. That ratio becomes the SPECint score for that test. (this differs from the rating in SPECINT2000, which multiplies the ratio by 100.

As an example for SPECint2000, we'll use the Sun Microsystems Fire V20z, with an AMD Opteron 252 CPU, running at 2600 MHz. Let's use the 164.gzip benchmark, which has a 1400 s reference time. We time how long it takes the 164.gzip benchmark to execute on our V20z test system, and find it takes 90.4 s. 1400/90.4 * 100 = 1548. Thus our 'base ratio' is quoted as '1548'. There are no units.

The normalized mean of the 12 benchmarks is given as the SPECint_base2000. The SPECint_base2000 of our above mentioned test system is 1569.

Two metrics are reported for a particular benchmark, "base" and "peak". The difference between the numbers arises based on compilation options. As the SPEC benchmarks are distributed as source code, it is up to the party performing the test to compile this code. There is agreement that the benchmarks should be compiled in the same way as a user would compile a program, but there is no consistent method for user compilation, it varies system by system. SPEC, in this case, defines two reference points, "base" and "peak". Base has a more strict set of compilation rules than peak. Less optimization can be done, the compiler flags must be the same for each benchmark, in the same order, and there must be a limited number of flags. Base, then, is closest to how a user would compile a program with standard flags. The 'peak' metric can be performed with maximum compiler optimization, even to the extent of different optimizations for each benchmark. This number represents maximum system performance, achieved by full compiler optimization.

SPECint tests are carried out on a wide range of hardware, with results typically published for the full range of system-level implementations employing the latest CPUs. for SPECint2006, the CPUs include Intel and AMD x86 & x86-64 processors, Sun SPARC CPUs, IBM POWER CPUs, and IA-64 CPUs. This range of capabilities, specifically in this case the number of CPUs, means that the SPECint benchmark is usually run on only a single CPU, even if the system has many CPUs. If a single CPU has dual-cores, only a single core is used; hyper-threading is also typically disabled,

A more complete system-level benchmark that allows all CPUs to be used is known as SPECint_rate2006, also called "CINT2006 Rate".

[edit] Benchmarks

The SPECint2006 test suite consists of 12 benchmark programs, designed to test exclusively the integer performance of the system.

The benchmarks are:

Benchmark	Language	Category
400.perlbench	C	Programming Language
401.bzip2	C	Compression
403.gcc	C	C Compiler
429.mcf	C	Combinatorial Optimization
445.gobmk	C	Artificial Intelligence
456.hmmer	C	Search Gene Sequence
458.sjeng	C	Artificial Intelligence
462.libquantum	C	Physics / Quantum Computing
464.h264ref	C	Video Compression
471.omnetpp	C++	Discrete Event Simulation
473.astar	C++	Path-finding Algorithms
483.xalancbmk	C++	XML Processing