SPECworkstation^® 4.0

The SPECworkstation^® 4.0 benchmark, released on December 5, 2024, is a major update to SPEC’s comprehensive benchmark designed to measure key aspects of workstation performance.

SPECworkstation 4.0 provides a robust, real-world measure of workstation performance, ensuring that professionals have the data they need to make informed decisions about their hardware investments. The benchmark targets the diverse needs of engineers, scientists, and developers who rely on workstation hardware for daily tasks by including a comprehensive set of tests. A complete benchmark run estimates system performance by measuring 23 workloads and over 80 subtests to generate scores for seven industry verticals and four hardware subsystems.

Key Updates

Support for AI/ML – The benchmark includes a new category of tests focusing on AI and ML workloads, including data science and ONNX runtime-based inference tests, reflecting the growing importance of AI/ML in workstation environments.
New workloads
- Autodesk Inventor: Measures key performance metrics in Inventor, a popular software package in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) segment.
- LLVM-Clang: Measure code compilation performance using the LLVM compiler and toolchain.
- Data Science: Represents a data scientist’s workflow, including data scrubbing, ETL (extract, transform, load), and classical machine learning operations using tools such as Numpy, Pandas, Scikit-learn, and XGBoost.
- Hidden Line Removal: Measures time taken to remove occluded edges from wireframe models.
- MFEM: Uses finite element methods to perform dynamic adaptive mesh refinement (AMR).
- ONNX Inference: Benchmarks AI/ML inference latency and throughput using the ONNX runtime, a popular framework for evaluating ML models.
- Updated CPU Workloads: Updates for popular workloads like Blender, Handbrake, NAMD, and Octave improve relevance, accuracy, and compatibility for performance measurements.
- Updated Graphics Workloads: Tests adapted from the SPECviewperf2020 v3.1 benchmark measure the performance of professional graphics cards using application-based traces.
New Accelerator subsystem – This release introduces the Accelerator subsystem, recognizing the rapid innovation in the computing space. With accelerators playing a critical role in speeding up tasks such as AI/ML processing, video transcoding, and other compute-intensive operations, measuring and understanding their performance in the workstation environment is essential.
Enhanced user interfaces – A completely redesigned UI simplifies the benchmarking process, making it more user-friendly, and a new command-line interface (CLI) enables easier automation.

Scoring and Results

The SPECworkstation 4.0 benchmark reports top-level scores in two categories: industry verticals and hardware subsystems. Individual subtest scores are also reported for users interested in specific workloads. Published results are available to users for comparison.

Industry Verticals

AI & Machine Learning
Energy
Financial Services
Life Sciences
Media & Entertainment
Product Design
Productivity & Development

Hardware Subsystems

Accelerator
CPU
Graphics
Storage

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SPECworkstation^® 4.0

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SPECworkstation^® 4.0