SPEC CPU 92
Status
Note: The SPEC CPU® 92 benchmarks have been obsoleted by the SPEC CPU® 95 benchmarks. See the article entitled "Example of Benchmark Obsolescence" for some of the reasons why...
This material for the SPEC CPU 92 benchmarks is provided for historical purposes only.
Results
Because SPEC's processes were paper-based and not electronic back when SPEC CPU 92 was the current benchmark, SPEC does not have any electronic storage of these benchmark results.
The people at the Performance Database Server have made the effort to bring online some of the CPU92 results.
Changes
SPEC CPU 92 did evolve over its 3 year lifespan (see SPEC CPU 95 for information about its successor). Changes were necessary to keep up with rising expectations and to keep pace with technical developments.
New Baseline Rules
SPEC has implemented baseline reporting rules. These rules are an attempt to limit vendors from applying all sorts of esoteric compiler technology to what is supposed to be a generally applicable benchmark.
072.sc and Curses
As performance increased, one of the 6 CINT92 benchmarks, 072.sc (based on the public domain spreadsheet calculator) proved to be very dependant upon ill-defined behavior in a set of library routines: curses(3). In September, 1994 SPEC moved to define and sanction a "common curses package" to address this problem.
For more information, read either a hindsight commentary, or the official rule-change notice.
Rules
For the dedicated reader, the original SPEC Run and Reporting Rules are available here. The Run Rules define what is required for a test to be run in a compliant manner. The Reporting Rules define what is necessary to disclose when reporting a result.
- CINT92 Run Rules (~10K text).
- CINT92 Reporting Rules (~15K text).
- CFP92 Run Rules (~10K text).
- CFP92 Reporting Rules (~15K text).
Benchmark Descriptions
Information about each of the benchmarks in the SPEC Suites.
SPECrates A description of the multi-processor metric from these SPEC Suites.