To evaluate two computer systems, a user can use a set of benchmarks—programs specifically chosen to measure performance.
SPEC (System Performance Evaluation Cooperative) is an effort funded and supported by a number of computer vendors to create standard sets of benchmarks for modern computer systems.
Two of the benchmarks are
SPEC89,
which focuses on processor performance and
SPEC CPU2017,
which consists of a set of 10 integer benchmarks (SPECspeed 2017 Integer) and 13 floating-point benchmarks (SPECspeed 2017 Floating Point).
The following table shows the SPECspeed 2017 Integer benchmarks running on a 1.8 GHz Intel Xeon E5-2650L:
Execution time is the product of the three factors in this table: instruction count, clocks per instruction (CPI), and clock cycle time.
SPECratio is simply the reference time, which is supplied by SPEC, divided by the measured execution time.
The single number quoted as SPECspeed 2017 Integer is the geometric mean of the SPECratios.