HINT: JOHN GUSTAFSON'S LATEST MEASURE OF PERFORMANCE

[Penio Penev <penev@xxxxxxx>]

I thought, that I would post this info here.

A performance measure for high-performance computing known as HINT that
evaluates accomplishment in terms of QUIPS has been proposed. 

The source is John Gustafson of the Department of Energy-supported Ames
Laboratory at Iowa State University who caused a stir in the
performance-evaluation community a few years ago with SLALOM. 

In a paper co-authored by Quinn O. Snell, also of the Ames Laboratory,
Gustafson argues that familiar performance measures like SPEC and
almost-forgotten ones like the PERFECT benchmark neglect a crucial
consideration: the quality of work done. 

This leads to QUIPS, the HINT measure of performance, which stands for
Quality Improvement Per Second. The paper asserts that this concept is "based
rigorously on progress toward solving a problem." 

The authors have experimented with HINT on various systems available at the
Ames Laboratory. Results for a Sun 4/370, Silicon Graphics' original Indigo,
an Indy without secondary cache, an Indy with the cache, a DEC 5000/240, and
an Indigo2 provide a fascinating glimpse into real capabilities. 

HINT can be downloaded over the Internet via anonymous FTP maintained by
the Scalable Computing Laboratory at Ames. A Mosaic home page is being
developed. The ftp server is: <ftp.scl.ameslab.gov>. The HINT directory is
located within /pub. A paper mailed by the authors to about 350 addresses
(including this reporter) may be found in the doc subdirectory. 

I believe might be interesting to some of you (most definitely it is
interesting to me :-) because MuP21 and F21 might get a very good benchmark.
And since the authors argue, that the benchmark measures progress towards an
answer, it might be very useful in real-life situations. 

Of course, one has to write and execute the benchmark first, but my 
feeling is, that some unexpectedly favourable result will show up.

Enjoy,

Penio.