The SPEC CPU2000 test was described in Part
1.
As you remember, the test results do not depend
on many factors - just on a processor, memory and a compiler. However,
these three words cover a great deal of variants. For example, there
are more than 5 platforms only for the Intel Pentium 4! And if we
take into account a great number of compilers and their optimization
flags it won't be easy to embrace everything. That is why let's
start with:
Memory size requirements
RAM size is one of the most important parameters
of a computer system. And different applications have different
requirements to it. We have plotted graphs of the memory size vs.
operating time for the SPEC CPU2000 applications. These data will
help us analyze test results. The programs ran on the Intel Pentium
III 800EB system coupled with 512 MBytes RAM under the Windows 2000
(we also made some measurements on the AMD Athlon XP based system).
Note that the memory requirements can depend on a compiler. This
time we used v5.0.1 from Intel with a standard set of libraries.
As there are a lot of illustrations and they were
made smaller they are followed by a brief diagram with main characteristics.
Summary data on the CINT2000 tests:
As you can see, some applications require as much
as 200 MBytes! Further we will find out how they work with such
memory and whether it helps to speed up.
The respective information on the CFP2000 tests:
Now the diagrams:
This test also has applications requiring a lot
of memory.
On the whole, the most of applications (17 of 26)
have smooth graphs.
Well, our examination showed that the SPEC recommended
configuration with 256 MBytes RAM suits the most of the tests providing
that the operating system doesn't take more than 50 MBytes. However,
it's not easy to forecast dependence on a type and speed of memory
taking into account only this information - an application can work
with small volumes of data but very intensively, and therefore,
depend much on a memory speed.
The results obtained will be further used many
times when we will try to find out how the SPEC CPU2000 results
depend on a speed and a type of memory.
