Reaching 2000 Downloads, EEMBC CoreMark Established as Gold Standard in Embedded-Processor Benchmarks

CoreMark™: The Industry-Standard Benchmark Moving to Replace Dhrystone

EL DORADO HILLS, Calif., July 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium (EEMBC) today announced that its CoreMark 1.0 benchmark has exceeded 2000 downloads by the processor user community, doubling its downloads in seven months. EEMBC has made the CoreMark benchmark openly available and it has quickly been recognized as a key performance metric for embedded processors by the industry. Users have posted more than 150 CoreMark scores benchmarking performance of embedded processors from the industry's most competitive players, including AMD, Analog Devices, ARM, Broadcom, Freescale, Fujitsu, Intel, Microchip, MIPS, NXP, Renesas, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, and VIA.

Unlike the infamous Dhrystone(1) benchmark that CoreMark is supplanting, the CoreMark benchmark evaluates a processor's ability to perform real tasks that embedded applications typically demand. CoreMark provides a starting point for measuring a processor's core performance and basic pipeline structure and is unsurpassed in approximating the real-world performance of embedded processors, ranging from 8-bit microcontrollers to high-end 32-bit devices and architectures.

CoreMark source code and all available scores are available for download from the CoreMark website (www.coremark.org).EEMBC encourages all CoreMark users to publish their scores and platform configurations to allow users to make quick comparisons between processors. The EEMBC Technology Center offers CoreMark score certifications for EEMBC members to ensure an extra level of credibility for the user-submitted scores, though CoreMark contains its own self-verification software.

"It's been quite interesting to see how the embedded community has been using CoreMark to benchmark processors ranging from low-end microcontrollers to high-end server processors," said Shay Gal-On, director of software technology for EEMBC. "This clearly demonstrates the versatility and applicability of CoreMark to many embedded environments, although it clearly doesn't replace the need for the traditional EEMBC benchmarks which are aimed at specific embedded market segments."

An EEMBC® EnergyBench™-enabled version of CoreMark is available to all EEMBC members and may be licensed separately by non-member companies. EnergyBench™ provides data on the amount of energy a processor consumes while running EEMBC's performance benchmarks. Further information on EnergyBench is available at eembc.org/benchmark/power_sl.php.

About EEMBC

Founded in 1997, EEMBC (pronounced 'embassy') has its origins as the Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium. As a non-profit, industry association, EEMBC develops embedded benchmark software to help system designers select the optimal processors. EEMBC organizes this software into benchmark suites targeting telecom/networking, digital media, Java, automotive/industrial, consumer, and office equipment products. The MultiBench suite specifically targets the capabilities of multicore processors. Processor evolution into systems-on-chips (SoCs) has led EEMBC to evolve its benchmark suites to target Smartphones and browsers, networking systems, and hypervisors. Obtain all benchmarks by joining EEMBC's open membership or through corporate or university licensing. The EEMBC Technology Center manages new benchmark development and certification of benchmark test results.

EEMBC's members include Advanced Digital Chips, AMD, Analog Devices, Andes Technology, Applied Micro, ARM, Broadcom, Cavium Networks, Code Sourcery, Cypress Semiconductor, Faraday, Freescale Semiconductor, Fujitsu Microelectronics, Green Hills Software, IAR Systems AB, IBM, Imagination Technologies, Infineon Technologies, Intel, LSI, LynuxWorks, Marvell Semiconductor, MediaTek, Mentor Graphics, Microchip Technology, MIPS Technologies, National Instruments, Netlogic Microsystems, Nokia, NXP Semiconductors, Open Kernel Labs, Qualcomm, Realtek Semiconductor, Red Hat, Renesas Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sony Computer Entertainment, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, VIA Technologies, VMware, and Wind River Systems.

EEMBC is a registered trademark of the Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium. All other trademarks appearing herein are the property of their respective owners.

NOTES:

(1) Dhrystone is a synthetic computing benchmark written by Reinhold P. Weicker in 1984. It was intended to be a representative benchmark of system (integer) programming. Unfortunately, its extremely small code size made it highly susceptible to compiler optimizations and therefore not representative of most real-life programs.

SOURCE EEMBC