Linux/Unix version of SPECviewperf 9 now available [LWN.net]

A free download of the SPECviewperf v9 graphics performance evaluation software is available for Linux, according to is available. "SPECviewperf has become a worldwide standard for users assessing graphics performance for new purchases and upgrades, graphics card vendors testing products under development, OEMs evaluating graphics components, and consultants and publication editors reviewing new graphics systems. SPECviewperf 9 represents a major upgrade to the popular benchmarking software, featuring two new viewsets, a totally restructured viewset, and code changes that bring the testing environment much closer to the realities experienced by application users."

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Printer friendly page Linux/Unix version of SPECviewperf 9 now available

Posted Aug 24, 2006 17:14 UTC (Thu) by pcampe (guest, #28223) [Link]

I wonder why SPECviewperf9 is free to download, while the other SPEC
benchmarks (CPU, Java Application Server, NFS, ...) start at 200 $ (if you
are an educational institution, otherwise up to ten times).

Wouldn't be interest of all parties (vendors, researcher, performance-wise
system administrators, etc...) to have this benchmarks freely available?

There are very few OSS benchmarks (the most notably exception being
iozone), and even less comparison charts, and I guess that being this tool
free to use, we can build better systems.

Printer friendly pageLinux/Unix version of SPECviewperf 9 now available

Posted Aug 25, 2006 0:38 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

More important than free availability in my eyes is that you should be
allowed to talk about the benchmarks. The license even bans you from
sharing benchmark *results*, it's crazy.

Printer friendly pageLinux/Unix version of SPECviewperf 9 now available

Posted Aug 26, 2006 10:37 UTC (Sat) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

A quick search comes up with:

http://lbs.sourceforge.net/

As you can see, that when there is a will, there is a free benchmark.
Consider the case of Netperf and dbench in that page:

* Netperf - a sophisticated network and filesystem benchmark, freely
available, publishable?
* dbench - similar workload to netbench but GPL'd and much easier to
config and run (doesn't require clients), suite also includes tbench and
smbtorture, no publishing restrictions.

(That page also links to something called "XBench", which has not been
updated since 1988).

Printer friendly pageLinux/Unix version of SPECviewperf 9 now available

Posted Aug 28, 2006 2:55 UTC (Mon) by zealot (guest, #37421) [Link]

More important than free availability in my eyes is that you should be allowed to talk about the benchmarks. The license even bans you from sharing benchmark *results*, it's crazy.

Sharing benchmark results is not forbidden. The software license (http://www.spec.org/gpc/opc.static/license.html) just says the following about benchmark results:

4. Reports. In order to preserve the integrity of SPEC's performance standards, USER agrees to use the SOFTWARE PRODUCT in accordance with the rules published by SPEC. If the USER chooses to publicly report measured results, the reporting must be strictly in accordance with the rules published by SPEC for the SOFTWARE PRODUCT. [...]