Ny standard for embedded processor benchmark

EEMBC (Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium) introducerer CoreMark-Pro, der bygger videre på den særdeles populære CoreMark benchmark (in english).

While CoreMark stresses the CPU pipeline, CoreMark-Pro tests the entire processor, adding comprehensive support for multicore technology, a combination of integer and floating-point workloads, and data sets for utilizing larger memory subsystems.

EEMBC has successfully achieved its goal for the original CoreMark: it has provided a reliable, repeatable, industry-standard benchmark that has largely supplanted the Dhrystone benchmark.

Users have downloaded CoreMark almost 13,000 times and EEMBC-certified scores are available from almost all of the worldwide processor and microcontroller vendors, including Atmel, ARM, Freescale Semiconductor, Imagination Technologies, Microchip Technology, NXP Semiconductors, Renesas Electronics, and STMicroelectronics.

The EEMBC CoreMark-Pro benchmark contains five prevalent integer workloads and four popular floating-point workloads. The integer workloads include JPEG compression, ZIP compression, an XML parser, the SHA-256 Secure Hash Algorithm, and a more memory-intensive version of the original CoreMark. The floating-point workloads include a fast Fourier transform (FFT), a linear algebra routine derived from LINPACK, a greatly improved version of the Livermore loops benchmark, and a neural net algorithm to evaluate patterns.

- Together, the workloads in CoreMark-Pro represent a wide diversity of performance characteristics, memory utilization, and instruction-level parallelism. This benchmark is guaranteed to highlight the strengths - and weaknesses - of any processor, says Rajiv Adhikary, senior software engineer at Analog Devices and chair of the EEMBC CoreMark-Pro working group.
  
To unreservedly establish themselves as industry standard, all EEMBC benchmarks, including CoreMark-Pro, are defined by EEMBC members and are thoroughly tested on a wide variety of platforms prior to release.

Also, following the trail blazed by other EEMBC industry-standard benchmarks, the portability of CoreMark-Pro is a key requirement to ensure wide-ranging usability. Continuing with the EEMBC CoreMark tradition, CoreMark-Pro is freely available, performs self-verification to ensure accurate results, and supports a process whereby users can submit their scores to the EEMBC Website. The publicly available list of scores conveniently allows - in fact, encourages - users to make comparisons between processors.

- Similar to the EEMBC CoreMark usage model, the accessibility of CoreMark-Pro makes it easier for embedded-industry experts to validate or challenge submitted scores, elaborates Markus Levy, EEMBC president.

- Furthermore, to make CoreMark-Pro even more accessible, its workloads encompass the CPU portion of the tests for EEMBC AndEBench-Pro and the first results are located on the EEMBC website.