Systems Benchmarking: For Scientists and Engineers

This book serves as both a textbook and handbook on the benchmarking of systems and components used as building blocks of modern information and communication technology applications. It provides theoretical and practical foundations as well as an in-depth exploration of modern benchmarks and benchmark development.

The book is divided into two parts: foundations and applications. The first part introduces the foundations of benchmarking as a discipline, covering the three fundamental elements of each benchmarking approach: metrics, workloads, and measurement methodology. The second part focuses on different application areas, presenting contributions in specific fields of benchmark development. These contributions address the unique challenges that arise in the conception and development of benchmarks for specific systems or subsystems, and they demonstrate how the foundations and concepts in the first part of the book are being used in existing benchmarks. Further, the book presents a number of concrete applications and case studies based on input from leading benchmark developers from consortia such as the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) and the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC). Besides a number of updates in almost all chapters, for this new edition three chapters are added in Part II of the book: (1) “Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence” to cater the growing need to evaluate and benchmark ML and AI systems, (2) “Scalability of Networks and Systems” focusing on novel metrics and techniques to evaluate scalability, and (3) "PC, Workstation, Graphics, and Network Benchmarks“ covering popular benchmarks like SYSmark, PCMark, Phoronix Test Suite, 3DMark, the Blender benchmark, and end-to-end network performance tools.

Providing both practical and theoretical foundations, as well as a detailed discussion of modern benchmarks and their development, the book is intended as a handbook for professionals and researchers working in areas related to benchmarking. It offers an up-to-date point of reference for existing work as well as latest results, research challenges, and future research directions. It also can be used as a textbook for graduate and postgraduate students studying any of the many subjects related to benchmarking. While readers are assumed to be familiar with the principles and practices of computer science, as well as software and systems engineering, no specific expertise in any subfield of these disciplines is required.

Samuel Kounev is a Professor of Computer Science and Chair of Software Engineering at the University of Würzburg (Germany). He has been actively involved in the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC), the largest standardization consortium in the area of computer systems benchmarking, since 2002. He serves as the elected chair of the SPEC Research Group, which he initiated in 2010 with the goal of providing a platform for collaborative research efforts between academia and industry in the area of quantitative system evaluation. Samuel is also co-founder of several conferences in the field, including the ACM/SPEC International Conference on Performance Engineering (ICPE) and the IEEE International Conference on Autonomic Computing and Self-Organizing Systems (ACSOS), for which he serves on the steering committees. He has published extensively in the area of systems benchmarking, modeling, and evaluation of performance, energy efficiency, reliability, and security.

Klaus-Dieter Lange is a Distinguished Technologist at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), where he started his professional career in 1998. His focus is on performance and workload optimization, industry-standard benchmark development, server efficiency, and the design of sustainable secure enterprise solutions. He serves on the SPEC Board of Directors and has been on the ICPE Steering Committee since its inception. Klaus is the founding chair of the SPECpower Committee, which, under his technical leadership, develops and maintains the SPECpower_ssj2008 benchmark, the SPEC PTDaemon Interface, the Chauffeur Worklet Development Kit, and the Server Efficiency Rating Tool (SERT) suite, among others. In 2020, Klaus drove the establishment of the SPEC International Standards Group (ISG) for which he has been serving as chair since then.

Jóakim von Kistowski is a Professor of Software Design at Aschaffenburg University of Applied Sciences (Germany). He focuses on modern software architectures, cloud-native software development, DevOps, and Green IT. In his prior role as senior software architect, Jóakim contributed to the adoption of new software performance, load testing, and benchmarking methods in industry. Jóakim has a strong SPEC background, having actively contributed to the SPECpower Committee and served as former chair of the SPEC RG Power Working Group.