Monday Jun 01, 2009
Another SPECtacular award from the SPEC annual meeting: Klaus Lange (HP) has become a valuable conduit across different levels of the organization and across benchmark subcommittees, by virtue of becoming indispensable in all of them. Though Klaus is an experienced "SPEC hand" he never forgot what he faced as a newcomer, and took it on himself to organize a new member orientation program to help new institutions integrate into SPEC more easily and effectively. As chair of the SPECpower committee Klaus delivered the industry's first energy efficiency benchmark, and leads the committee in aiding other groups as they add energy metrics to a wide range of benchmarks. These groups include many SPEC committees as well as other industry consortia. As HP's representative on the OSG steering committee Klaus has earned respect for his opinions with his diligence and fair mindedness. As a member of the Board of Directors he is often the first to step up to volunteer for important projects, as well as exercising sound judgment in conducting SPEC's business operations.
Friday May 22, 2009
More 2009
SPECtacular awards. The SPECpower committee has been busy. They
released version 1.10 of
the SPECpower_ssj2008 benchmark as a no-cost upgrade to existing
licensees. It adds support for measurement of multi-node (blade)
servers, improves usability, and adds a graphical display of power
data during benchmark execution. Review and publication of benchmark
results continues apace, with a spirited competition for first place,
and with ever more power
analyzers accepted for testing, and more test labs qualified for
independent publication. They have also been assisting several other
benchmark committees inside SPEC, and other industry
standard benchmark organizations, to implement energy measurement for
their benchmarks. SPECpower is more than just a benchmark; it is a
methodology,
and the methodology is modified and expanded as necessary over time
to accommodate energy measurements for all the different workloads
which are relevant to the real world in those market segments. In
alphabetical order SPEC recognizes:
-
Chris
Boire (Sun
Microsystems) – As release manager he coordinated and
integrated development activities to keep the deliverables on
schedule.
-
David
Schmidt (HP)
– He created stand-alone and network integrated tools for
automated results checking to help insure that results submissions
are correct and complete.
-
Greg Darnell (Dell)
– Author of the PTDaemon, he helped many other groups get started
measuring power for their benchmarks. He helps out with whatever
needs to be done, technical or organizational.
-
Hansfried
Block (Fujitsu
Technology Solutions) - He automated the process of determining
power analyzer precision, handled the acceptance of several new
power analyzers, and was instrumental in getting multi-channel
analyzers accepted.
-
Harry
Li (Intel)
– He was primary developer of the Visual Activity Monitor, giving
an unique view of the system's activity.
-
Jeremy
Arnold (IBM)
– If I tried to recount all the accomplishments Jeremy was cited
for I'd probably run into some internal blog size limit. Suffice it
to say he is a primary developer on many parts of the code, who
never turns down a plea for help, and who is never satisfied until
the entire benchmark package is right.
-
Karl
Huppler (IBM)
– As primary author/editor of the Power and Performance
Methodology, he organized the document to capture deep technical
consensus in the committee, and made it readable and understandable
for people new to the field.
-
Matthew
Galloway (HP)
– He designed the control software to drive multiple JVMs,
enabling multi node (blade) testing.
-
An engineer (AMD)
– Who created and maintained much of the web content explaining
the benchmark and methodology to the public.
Wednesday May 13, 2009
More 2009
SPECtacular awards. Sometimes even success doesn't succeed, at first.
SPEC developed a workstation
energy consumption benchmark, and a lot of people worked extra
hard to deliver it in time for EPA to consider using it in the Energy
Star program which is being extended beyond PC's to also include
workstations, servers, thin clients, and storage. Although EPA
decided not to use our test for the workstation program at this time,
the work is still important and I am confident it will be used in
some way. A graphics processor can easily use
more energy than a CPU, especially a high performance accelerated
3D processor. For their exceptional work in producing this benchmark
I thank David Reiner of AMD,
Joerg Grosshennig of Fujitsu
Technology Solutions, Paul Besl of Intel,
and an engineer from NVIDIA.
Friday Aug 10, 2007
There's an interesting posting on ZDnet from LinuxWorld about workload consolidation and virtualilzation to reduce power consumption, with some pros and cons. Then looking at other postings by George Ou I saw this idea for secure anonymous Wifi hotspot access. Maybe we'd all better read Ou's blog before our usernames and passwords end up posted on Defcon's wall of sheep.
Walter,
Does the engineer from AMD wish to remai...
The AMD engineer hasn't said that it's okay to pos...