Sunday, February 27, 2011

Saturday, February 26, 2011

OpenBenchmarking.org and PTS 3.0 - new advances in benchmarking

I'm really pleased to see the launch of OpenBenchmarking.org. Read the welcome note from Michael Larabel, the Founder of Phoronix Media, Lead Developer Of The Phoronix Test Suite & OpenBenchmarking.org:

WELCOME TO OPENBENCHMARKING.ORG
26 FEBRUARY 2011

Whether you consider yourself a Linux hardware enthusiast, the normal Windows user wishing to transition to Linux, or the procurement officer of a Fortune 500 company, welcome to OpenBenchmarking.org. OpenBenchmarking.org is an open, collaborative testing platform for benchmarking and performance analysis. Regardless of operating system, there is nothing similar, and this is the largest public Linux hardware database, but it's much more than that; it's an adaptive, discovery platform with a focus on repeatable benchmarks, global comparisons, crowd-sourced / community testing, and a high level of interactivity. There are thousands of computer components being tracked in a variety of configurations and thousands of test results accumulating from different platforms whether they be desktops, servers, or even mobile devices.

There are a number of unique concepts demonstrated by OpenBenchmarking.org, including crowd-sourced benchmarking, the ease to which benchmarks can be repeated, results can be stored publicly or privately and shared throughout the world, and unique features for performance classifications and advanced hardware/software searches. OpenBenchmarking.org is designed to be very extensible to meet the needs of both individuals and software projects / organizations.

Arriving at this same time is the general availability of Phoronix Test Suite 3.0-Iveland. This release features integration with OpenBenchmarking.org for uploading and downloading test results, seamlessly obtaining updated/new test profiles and test suites, logging into an OpenBenchmarking.org user accounts, MIME OpenBenchmarking-format launching capabilities, support for attaching system logs and other hardware/software statistics, and other functionality. In addition, Phoronix Test Suite 3.0 offers enhanced result graphs, support for external result notification hooks, support for nesting the Phoronix Test Suite within Wine environments, recognition of new code compilers, client support for new embedded operating environments, and over 200 other changes since the release of Phoronix Test Suite 2.8 in 2010.

In exploring OpenBenchmarking.org, here are a few real-world examples to show off some of the areas of OpenBenchmarking.org:

Sample Searches: Radeon HD 4850Intel Core i7 970Ubuntu 10.10GPUAMD
Sample Test Results: A Proper Graphics ComparisonA Simple Test
Sample Test Profile Pages: Phoronix Test SuiteNexuiz
Sample User Pages: Michael LarabelPhoronix Test Suite


Over the coming days and weeks, OpenBenchmarking.org will continue to be tuned and a number of new features will continue to be introduced. You can view this first implementation right now as a "beta", but any and all feedback regarding OpenBenchmarking.org is welcome and much appreciated. In particular, there are major refinements coming very soon to the product search functionality, support for complex searches and sub-queries, enabling the upload of user test profiles and suites, further advancements to OpenBenchmarking.org Performance Classifications (OPC), support for embedding rich-format graphs externally, and much more.

Further in the pipeline is an external API, support for running Phoromatic over the OpenBenchmarking.org platform, better support for peripheral devices, the official roll-out of Phoronix Certification & Qualification Suites (PCQS), OpenBenchmarking.org Professional, and much more.

Please try out OpenBenchmarking.org and any questions or comments are much appreciated.

Michael Larabel
Founder of Phoronix Media, Lead Developer Of The Phoronix Test Suite & OpenBenchmarking.org

MacHeads - A documentary

I haven't drunk the Apple Kool-Aid, but here is an interesting documentary about Apple Fans:

Watch more free documentaries

Monday, February 7, 2011

Google I/O is getting quite popular!

RT @VicGundotra - Google I/O '09 sold out in 90 days, '10 in 50 days... #io2011: 59 minutes. Holy moly.less than a minute ago via web



Could it be because of the free stuff that they give out at the conference, or because of increased interest in developing with Google products?

justinsb's posterous has an interesting suggestion: Don't give anything away this year. For someone who couldn't afford the trip, I agree. Keep the scalpers out, and keep the developers in.
His idea:
Announce that there will be nothing given away at Google I/O this year, offer free refunds to anyone that wants them, and open a waitlist. The scalpers will take their refunds, and the real developers will be able to get in.
If the only reason that you want to go is for the free stuff, go talk to Oprah.

Google: Don't be Oprah. Be better than that. Help out the people that want to LEARN.