Low-level benchmarking: performance profiles

The aim of this paper is to advance the presentation of low-level benchmarking results in the form of performance profiles, which present concisely on one or two pages the single- or multi-processor performance results. A profile consists of measured and derived performance parameters which characterise the performance of parallel computers. In order to achieve a more systematic approach to low-level benchmarking methodology, we also introduce the concept of the benchmarking frame. Several sets of low-level benchmarking results from current RISC platforms including DEC Alpha, SGI Onyx, and SUN Ultra-2 are shown to prove the validity of our approach.