Exercise 1 - Create a benchmark and evaluate several computers

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General Information

Objectives

Attention: This exercise is individual, with a collective final result. You must take the measurements and place them on the wiki until 24/03. The report can only be made after this date.

Before you start

You should remember the concepts of performance measures studied in MC722. Here are some questions to guide your exercise:

Comment on these items in your report. It is not necessary to answer each of the questions.

Activity

This exercise is the result of collective work, where each component must deliver a report and perform a part of the activity. Each student must perform only one the following activities:

  1. Define a program to measure the performance of a computer: Choose a program (it cannot be part of an existing benchmark) that can be used to measure the computer's performance. Activities and recommendations:
    • Do not use a program that is, by itself, a benchmark
    • The program must have an open source code to allow it to be compiled and run on multiple machines (you don't need to run it on multiple machines)
    • Define, if necessary, a set of standard input (s) and output (s) for your program, so that all executions are identical in behavior
    • Prepare a script or define a command line so that the program runs with the correct settings (if any) and parameters
    • Be careful not to choose programs that can generate performance numbers that are susceptible to big errors (very small numbers, for example). Run times less than 10s can cause accuracy errors
    • Define your performance and measurement criteria on a base computer
    • Publish the information above so that other students in the class can reproduce their data on other computers. Use the wiki of the discipline
    • Justify the reason for choosing this program, describing it briefly
    • Don't forget to put your computer's specifications on the wiki
  2. Run the three programs defined in item 1 on a computer: Choose three of the programs that have been released by your colleagues and run them on another computer that has not been used. Put the performance information on the same page described in item 1. Don't forget to put the computer's specifications on the wiki.
  3. Run a program defined in item 1 on three different computers: Choose a program that was released by one of your colleagues and run it on three computers other than those that have already been used. Put the performance information on the same page described in item 1. Don't forget to put the computer's specifications on the wiki.

Based on the results available on the wiki, make your report comparing the performance of the different computers. Use all relevant points. Do not forget to inform, for each measurement, the settings of the computer that was used. Rank computers in order of performance.

Delivery

Submit a report of at most 2 pages, describing the activity performed. Use a section / subsection only to describe your individual activity. Analyze and comment on the result.
Return discipline page.