softwarebenchmarking
Software benchmarking is the practice of measuring and comparing the performance characteristics of software systems under defined workloads. It focuses on how efficiently a program uses resources such as CPU time, memory, I/O, and energy, and how performance scales with workload or data size. The goal is to provide objective data to guide development, configuration, and procurement decisions.
Benchmarks can be categorized by scope and realism: microbenchmarks evaluate small, isolated operations; application benchmarks run
Methodology: define objective and metrics (throughput, latency, percentiles, scalability, power efficiency); select workloads and data sets;
Challenges: results can be affected by variance due to background processes, virtualization, cloud multitasking, and thermals.
Standards and examples: widely used benchmark suites include SPEC CPU, which measures processor performance on representative
Applications: benchmarking informs optimization efforts, hardware and software procurement, capacity planning, and research into performance engineering.