1# byte-unixbench
2
3**UnixBench** is the original BYTE UNIX benchmark suite, updated and revised by many people over the years.
4
5The purpose of UnixBench is to provide a basic indicator of the performance of a Unix-like system; hence, multiple
6tests are used to test various aspects of the system's performance. These test results are then compared to the
7scores from a baseline system to produce an index value, which is generally easier to handle than the raw scores.
8The entire set of index values is then combined to make an overall index for the system.
9
10Some very simple graphics tests are included to measure the 2D and 3D graphics performance of the system.
11
12Multi-CPU systems are handled. If your system has multiple CPUs, the default behaviour is to run the selected tests
13twice -- once with one copy of each test program running at a time, and once with N copies, where N is the number of
14CPUs. This is designed to allow you to assess:
15
16* the performance of your system when running a single task
17* the performance of your system when running multiple tasks
18* the gain from your system's implementation of parallel processing
19
20Do be aware that this is a system benchmark, not a CPU, RAM or disk benchmark. The results will depend not only on
21your hardware, but on your operating system, libraries, and even compiler.
22
23## History
24
25**UnixBench** was first started in 1983 at Monash University, as a simple synthetic benchmarking application. It
26was then taken and expanded by **Byte Magazine**. Linux mods by Jon Tombs, and original authors Ben Smith,
27Rick Grehan, and Tom Yager. The tests compare Unix systems by comparing their results to a set of scores set
28by running the code on a benchmark system, which is a SPARCstation 20-61 (rated at 10.0).
29
30David C. Niemi maintained the program for quite some time, and made some major modifications and updates,
31and produced **UnixBench 4**. He later gave the program to Ian Smith to maintain. Ian subsequently made
32some major changes and revised it from version 4 to version 5.
33
34Thanks to Ian Smith for managing the release up to 5.1.3.  As of the next release (5.2), [Anthony F. Voellm](https://github.com/voellm) is going to help maintain the code base.  The releases will happen once there are enough pull requests to warrant a new release.
35
36The general process will be the following:
37
38* Open a bug announcing that a new release will happen.
39* Everything on the `dev` branch will be run.
40* Code will move from the `dev` branch into `main` and be tagged.  Bug fix releases with increment the subversion and major functionality changes will increase the major version.
41
42## Included Tests
43
44UnixBench consists of a number of individual tests that are targeted at specific areas. Here is a summary of what
45each test does:
46
47### Dhrystone
48
49Developed by Reinhold Weicker in 1984. This benchmark is used to measure and compare the performance of computers. The test focuses on string handling, as there are no floating point operations. It is heavily influenced by hardware and software design, compiler and linker options, code optimization, cache memory, wait states, and integer data types.
50
51### Whetstone
52
53This test measures the speed and efficiency of floating-point operations. This test contains several modules that are meant to represent a mix of operations typically performed in scientific applications. A wide variety of C functions including `sin`, `cos`, `sqrt`, `exp`, and `log` are used as well as integer and floating-point math operations, array accesses, conditional branches, and procedure calls. This test measure both integer and floating-point arithmetic.
54
55### `execl` Throughput
56
57This test measures the number of `execl` calls that can be performed per second. `execl` is part of the exec family of functions that replaces the current process image with a new process image. It and many other similar commands are front ends for the function `execve()`.
58
59### File Copy
60
61This measures the rate at which data can be transferred from one file to another, using various buffer sizes. The file read, write and copy tests capture the number of characters that can be written, read and copied in a specified time (default is 10 seconds).
62
63### Pipe Throughput
64
65A pipe is the simplest form of communication between processes. Pipe throughput is the number of times (per second) a process can write 512 bytes to a pipe and read them back. The pipe throughput test has no real counterpart in real-world programming.
66
67### Pipe-based Context Switching
68
69This test measures the number of times two processes can exchange an increasing integer through a pipe. The pipe-based context switching test is more like a real-world application. The test program spawns a child process with which it carries on a bi-directional pipe conversation.
70
71### Process Creation
72
73This test measure the number of times a process can fork and reap a child that immediately exits. Process creation refers to actually creating process control blocks and memory allocations for new processes, so this applies directly to memory bandwidth. Typically, this benchmark would be used to compare various implementations of operating system process creation calls.
74
75### Shell Scripts
76
77The shells scripts test measures the number of times per minute a process can start and reap a set of one, two, four and eight concurrent copies of a shell scripts where the shell script applies a series of transformation to a data file.
78
79### System Call Overhead
80
81This estimates the cost of entering and leaving the operating system kernel, i.e., the overhead for performing a system call. It consists of a simple program repeatedly calling the `getpid` (which returns the process id of the calling process) system call. The time to execute such calls is used to estimate the cost of entering and exiting the kernel.
82
83### Graphical Tests
84
85Both 2D and 3D graphical tests are provided; at the moment, the 3D suite in particular is very limited, consisting of the `ubgears` program. These tests are intended to provide a very rough idea of the system's 2D and 3D graphics performance. Bear in mind, of course, that the reported performance will depend not only on hardware, but on whether your system has appropriate drivers for it.
86
87# License
88
89This project is released under the [GPL v2](LICENSE.txt) license.
90