Benchmark

4 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  benchmark \benchmark\, bench mark \bench mark\ (Surveying)
     1. Any permanent mark to which other levels may be referred.
        such as:
        (a) A horizontal mark at the water's edge with reference
            to which the height of tides and floods may be
            measured.


        (b) a surveyer's mark on a permanent object of
            predetermined position and elevation used as a
            reference point.
            [Webster 1913 Suppl. + WordNet 1.5]
  
     2. something serving as a standard by which related items may
        be judged; as, his painting sets the benchmark of quality.
        [PJC + WordNet 1.5]
  
     3. a test or series of tests designed to compare the
        qualities or performance of different devices of the same
        type. Certain sets of computer programs are much used as
        benchmarks for comparing the performance of different
        computers, especially by comparing the time it takes to
        complete a test.
        [PJC]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  benchmark
       n 1: a standard by which something can be measured or judged;
            "his painting sets the benchmark of quality"
       2: a surveyor's mark on a permanent object of predetermined
          position and elevation used as a reference point [syn: {bench
          mark}]

From Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001) [jargon]:

  benchmark n. [techspeak] An inaccurate measure of computer performance.
     "In the computer industry, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn
     lies, and benchmarks." Well-known ones include Whetstone, Dhrystone,
     Rhealstone (see {h}), the Gabriel LISP benchmarks (see {gabriel}), the
     SPECmark suite, and LINPACK. See also {machoflops}, {MIPS}, {smoke and
     mirrors}.
  
  

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  benchmark
       
           A standard program or set of programs which can be
          run on different computers to give an inaccurate measure of
          their performance.
       
          "In the computer industry, there are three kinds of lies:
          lies, damn lies, and benchmarks."
       
          A benchmark may attempt to indicate the overall power of a
          system by including a "typical" mixture of programs or it may
          attempt to measure more specific aspects of performance, like
          graphics, I/O or computation (integer or {floating-point}).
          Others measure specific tasks like {rendering} polygons,
          reading and writing files or performing operations on
          matrices.  The most useful kind of benchmark is one which is
          tailored to a user's own typical tasks.  While no one
          benchmark can fully characterise overall system performance,
          the results of a variety of realistic benchmarks can give
          valuable insight into expected real performance.
       
          Benchmarks should be carefully interpreted, you should know
          exactly which benchmark was run (name, version); exactly what
          configuration was it run on (CPU, memory, compiler options,
          single user/multi-user, peripherals, network); how does the
          benchmark relate to your workload?
       
          Well-known benchmarks include {Whetstone}, {Dhrystone},
          {Rhealstone} (see {h}), the {Gabriel benchmarks} for {Lisp},
          the {SPECmark} suite, and {LINPACK}.
       
          See also {machoflops}, {MIPS}, {smoke and mirrors}.
       
          {Usenet} newsgroup: {news:comp.benchmarks}.
       
          {Tennessee BenchWeb (http://netlib.org/benchweb/)}.
       
          [{Jargon File}]
       
          (2002-03-26)