computer science

Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation

Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation rather than just read about it. In short: The Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) is a non-profit consortium that establishes and maintains standardized benchmarks and performance evaluation tools for new generations of computing systems. SPEC was founded in 1988 and its membership comprises over 120 computer hardware and software vendors, educational institutions, research organizations, and government agencies internationally.

Key takeaways

Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) is a non-profit consortium that establishes and maintains standardized benchmarks and performance evaluation tools for new generations of computing systems. SPEC was founded in 1988 and its membership comprises over 120 computer hardware and software vendors, educational institutions, research organizations, and government agencies internationally. SPEC benchmarks and tools are widely used to evaluate the performance of computer systems; the test results are published on the SPEC website.

History The SPEC organization has its origins in efforts by prominent workstation and high-performance computing vendors Apollo Computer, Hewlett-Packard, MIPS Computer Systems and Sun Microsystems to more accurately characterise the performance of computer systems, particularly those based on RISC architectures. Since workstations and servers had begun to incorporate architectural features previously employed in mainframe and supercomputer designs, existing benchmarks such as Dhrystone and Whetstone were considered inadequate. In May 1989, with its membership expanded to ten companies including Digital Equipment Corporation and IBM, the consortium announced the first version of its benchmark suite, running on Unix and consisting of 20 benchmarks. Despite deprecating the established VAX MIPS or VAX Unit of Performance metric, the initial SPEC benchmarks retained Digital's VAX 11/780 as its reference, having a SPECmark of 1. This SPECmark metric, a feature of the SPEC89 suite, was the geometric mean of two separate results, SPECint89 for integer-based benchmarks and SPECfp89 for benchmarks emphasising floating-point arithmetic, but a single figure was later deemed to be inadequate at representing the general performance of a given system.

References

External links Official website Official List of SPEC Benchmarks

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation

In research: Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Companies based in Virginia, Companies established in 1988, Computer performance, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation in simple terms?

Why does Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation.