Design News for Mechanical and Design Engineers

Orlando, FL--The Graphics Performance Characterization (GPC) group of SPEC (Standard Performance Evaluation Corp.) announced a standardized graphics application benchmark based on SolidWorks 98 CAD/CAM software at SIGGRAPH '98. The GPC group aims to take benchmarking to the application level for computer system comparisons.

The SolidWorks 98 application benchmark represents a day in the life of a typical SolidWorks 98 user. SolidWorks initially developed the benchmark, and SPEC/GPC's APC project group refined it. Written in Visual Basic and C, the benchmark runs on Windows NT and Windows 95 computers and uses different-sized CAD/CAM solid models.

The benchmark's five tests--I/O-intensive operations, CPU-intensive operations, and three types of graphics operations--are timed--based on common user interaction with the models. A single number is derived from a weighted geometric mean of the normalized score for all five tests. Scores are also reported for each of the individual tests and for the geometric mean of the three graphics tests. Results are normalized to a reference machine equipped with a 300-MHz Pentium II processor and a PERMEDIA 2 graphics processor.

The benchmark is free to the public, and the first official results are scheduled to appear on SPEC/GPC's web site (www.-spec.org/gpc) by the end of the year.

Members of the APC project group include 3D Labs, Compaq, Dell, HAL Computer, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Intergraph, Real 3D, S3, Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems, Universidad Nacional de Mexico, and the University of Central Florida.

The group is also nearing completion of a 14-test Pro/ENGINEER benchmark, which it expects to release by the end of the year.