From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [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]:
noun
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)
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