SPECint2006

SPECint2006 is a benchmark suite developed by the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) designed to measure the processor performance of computers. It consists of a collection of C and Fortran programs that represent a variety of real-world computing tasks. The suite is divided into two main categories: integer and floating-point operations, though SPECint2006 specifically focuses on the integer portion.

The SPECint2006 benchmark comprises 12 different integer programs. These programs are chosen to represent a range of computational characteristics, including instruction mix, memory access patterns, and compiler optimization opportunities. Examples of the workloads include compilers, compression utilities, and integer mathematical operations. The benchmark runs these programs on a given system and measures the time it takes to complete them. This time is then used to calculate a SPECint_base2006 score, which is normalized against a baseline system. A higher score indicates better performance.

SPECint2006 was released in 2006 and became a widely used standard for comparing CPU performance, particularly for general-purpose computing. While it has been superseded by newer SPEC benchmark suites like SPEC CPU2017, SPECint2006 remains relevant for historical comparisons and understanding processor performance trends from that era. The benchmark requires specific configurations and compilation flags to ensure fair and reproducible results across different hardware and software platforms.