The SPECworkstation® 3.1 benchmark, released on March 17, 2021, measures all key aspects of workstation performance based on diverse professional applications
The benchmark includes more than 30 workloads containing nearly 140 tests that exercise CPU, graphics, I/O and memory bandwidth. The updates in version 3.1 offer significant improvements in how workloads partition and distribute threads across multi-core CPUs, expand support for next generation GPUs, and add features such as vectorization that leverage advanced CPU hardware to accelerate performance.
Key updates in the SPECworkstation 3.1 benchmark include:
The SPECworkstation 3.1 benchmark runs under Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit. Windows 11 is not supported by SPECworkstation at this time. Results from version 3.1 are not comparable to those from previous versions of the SPECworkstation benchmark, including SPECworkstation v3.0.x versions.
This workload uses the open-source Blender (blender.org) application to measure the performance of content-creation workflows. It contains the following tests:
This workload is based on the open-source media encoder handbrake (www.handbrake.fr). It takes a 4K mp4 file and transcodes it with an H.265 encoder at two different resolutions. The first transcoding down-samples the file from 4K to 2K. The second trans coding goes from H264 4K to H265 4K.
LuxRender uses LuxMark, a benchmark based on the new LuxCore physically based renderer, to render a chrome sphere resting on a grid of numbers in a beach scene.
This is the maya-05 viewset from the SPECviewperf 13 graphics performance benchmark. It was created from traces of the graphics workload generated by the Maya 2017 application from Autodesk.
This is the 3dsmax-06 viewset from the SPECviewperf 13 graphics performance benchmark. It was created from traces of the graphics workload generated by 3ds Max 2016 using the default Nitrous DX11 driver.
Rodinia is a benchmark suite developed by Professor Kevin Skadron, et al, at the University of Virginia, to benchmark heterogeneous platforms. The CFD solver is an unstructured-grid, finite-volume solver for 3D Euler equations representing compressible flow.
This workload is based on the OpenFOAM open-source CFD solver. The OpenFOAM combustion solver XiFoam is used to solve compressible premixed/partially-premixed combustion with turbulence modeling.
This workload is based on the open-source finite element program Calculix (www.calculix.de). It models the internal temperature of a jet engine turbine.
This is the catia-05 viewset from SPECviewperf 13 for testing graphics performance. It was created from traces of the graphics workload generated by the CATIA V6 R2012 application from Dassault Systémes. Model sizes range from 5.1 to 21 million vertices.
This is the creo-02 viewset from the SPECviewperf 13 graphics performance benchmark. It was created from traces of the graphics workload generated by the Creo 3 and Creo 4 applications from PTC. Model sizes range from 20 to 48 million vertices.
This is the snx-03 viewset from the SPECviewperf 13 graphics performance benchmark. It was created from traces of the graphics workload generated by the NX 8.0 application from Siemens PLM. Model sizes range from 7.15 to 8.45 million vertices.
This is the sw-04 viewset from the SPECviewperf 13 graphics performance benchmark. It was created from traces of Dassault Systémes’ SolidWorks 2013 SP1 application. Models used in the viewset range in size from 2.1 to 21 million vertices.
This is the showcase-02 viewset from the SPECviewperf 13 graphics performance benchmark. It was created from traces of Autodesk’s Showcase 2013 application. The model used in the viewset contains 8 million vertices.
LAMMPS is a molecular dynamics simulator developed at Sandia National Labs (http://lammps.sandia.gov/bench.html). The workload consists of five tests that simulate a variety of molecular properties. LAMMPS is run in parallel using MPI in the SPECworkstation benchmark.
NAMD is a scalable molecular dynamics simulator developed by the Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group in the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/namd/). The workload consists of three tests that simulate a variety of molecular interactions.
Rodinia is a benchmark suite developed by Professor Kevin Skadron, et al, at the University of Virginia, to benchmark heterogeneous platforms. It contains the following tests:
This is the medical-02 viewset from the SPECviewperf 13 graphics performance benchmark. It uses the Tuvok rendering core of the ImageVis3D (http://www.sci.utah.edu/software/imagevis3d.html) volume visualization program to render a 2D projection of a 3D volumetric grid. A typical 3D grid in this viewset is a group of 3D slices acquired by a scanner (such as CT or MRI).
This section uses three popular algorithms from the financial services industry.
This workload computes the discrete Fourier transform for 1D, 2D and 3D transforms. The 1D transform uses a 16MB vector, the 2D transform uses a 4Kx4K matrix, and the 3D transform uses a 256x256x256 matrix.
This workload computes a convolution with a random filter of 100×100 pixels on an image that is 20,000×20,000 pixels.
This workload addresses seismic data processing. It implements a Surface-Related Multiples Prediction (SRMP) algorithm written by Evgeny Kurin of GEOLAB Ltd. to remove multiples from seismic data.
This workload uses a Kirchhoff equation form of the wave equation to calculate the back propagation of the seismic wavefield.
This workload solves the Poisson equation using OpenMP for parallel execution.
This is the energy-02 viewset from the SPECviewperf 13 graphics performance benchmark. It is based on rendering techniques used by the open-source OpendTect seismic visualization application.
This section benchmarks several applications that are in widespread use in the workstation market.
The freeware 7zip program offers good scaling performance between processors to compress and extract a hierarchy of files.
This workload uses Python 3.6 to benchmark a variety of math operations, including those using the numpy and scipy math libraries, and the make charts and multithreaded matrix functionalities.
This workload uses Octave, a programming language for scientific computing, to compute a variety of math operations.
The storage workload is based on storage transaction traces from a wide variety of professional applications engaged in real work. These are grouped according to market segments for scoring purposes.
LuxRender uses LuxMark, a benchmark based on the new LuxCore physically based renderer, to render a chrome sphere resting on a grid of numbers in a beach scene.
Caffe is a deep-learning framework developed by Berkeley AI Research (BAIR) and by community contributors. Yangqing Jia created the project during his PhD studies at UC Berkeley.
Folding@home (FAH or F@h) is a distributed computing project for disease research that simulates protein folding, computational drug design, and other types of molecular dynamics.
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More than 30 workloads containing nearly 140 tests in the SPECworkstation 3.1 benchmark exercise CPU, graphics, I/O and memory bandwidth. The workloads are divided by application categories that include media and entertainment (3D animation, rendering), product development (CAD/CAM/CAE), life sciences (medical, molecular), financial services, energy (oil and gas), general operations, and GPU compute.
Individual scores are generated for each test and a composite score for each category is calculated based on a reference machine, yielding a “bigger is better” result. The reference machine is a Z240 tower with the following configuration:
Processor: Intel E3-1240 v5 @3.5GHz
Graphics: AMD Radeon Pro WX3100
Memory: 16GB, DDR3 2133MHz
Storage: SanDisk 512GB SSD
OS: MS Windows 10 build 17134
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