SPEC CPU2000 System Requirements

Last updated: 27 Nov 2001 cds

1. A computer system running UNIX or Windows (NT-derived). (See the Portability Note below)

2. A CD-ROM drive

3. 256MB of RAM. Attempting to run the suite with less memory is strongly discouraged, as you will end up measuring the speed of your paging file, not the speed of your CPU.

   More memory will be needed if you run multi-user SPECrates.

4. Disk space:

   • Typically 2GB of disk space to install and run the suite.

   • More disk space will be needed if you plan to maintain a large set of binaries.

   • More disk space will be needed if you plan to run SPECrates with multiple copies. Note that SPECrates must be run using a single file system, so large runs will likely require some form of hardware or software disk striping.

   • Minimum requirement: It is possible to run with about 800MB to 1GB of disk space if you are running only single-CPU metrics and if you clean up the run directories between experiments; see runspec.html for more information.

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     Note: links to SPEC CPU2000 documents on this web page assume that you are reading the page from a directory that also contains the other SPEC CPU2000 documents. If by some chance you are reading this web page from a location where the links do not work, try accessing the referenced documents at one of the following locations: www.spec.org/cpu2000/docs/ The $SPEC/docs/ directory on a Unix system where SPEC CPU2000 has been installed. The %spec%\docs.nt\ directory on a Wind ows/NT system where SPEC CPU2000 has been installed. The docs/ or docs.nt\ directory on your S PEC CPU2000 distribution cdrom.

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5. Since SPEC supplies only source code for the benchmarks, you will need either:

          a. A set of compilers for the result(s) you intend to measure:
   
             1) For SPECint2000: Both C and C++ compilers
             2) For SPECfp2000:  Both C and Fortran-90 compilers
   
          --or--
   
          b. A pre-compiled set of benchmark executables, given to you
             by another user of the same revision of SPEC CPU2000, and
   	  any run-time libraries that may be required for those 
   	  executables.
   
   

   Please notice that you cannot generate a valid CPU2000 result unless you meet all of requirement 5.a.1 or 5.a.2 or 5.b. For example, if you are attempting to build the floating point suite but lack a Fortran-90 compiler, you will not be able to measure a SPECfp2000 result.

During the development of SPEC CPU2000 V1.2, many of these operating systems were re-tested, and in some cases newer versions of the operating systems were tested. In the Windows family, testing included Windows Advanced Server, Windows XP, and Windows 2000. (Notice that SPEC CPU2000 is not compatible with versions of Windows that are not derived from Windows NT. For example, SPEC CPU2000 cannot be expected to work on Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 3.1, or Windows Me.)

Despite SPEC's testing efforts, certain portability problems are likely to arise from time to time. For example:

• Some platforms may not have a Fortran-90 compiler available.
• Some older compilers may not include all the features needed to run the entire suite.
• Sometimes, a new release of a compiler or operating system may introduce new behavior that is incompatible with one of the benchmarks.

If you visit http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/ and look up results for SPEC CPU2000, you will find combinations of OS and compiler versions that are known to work. For example, if a vendor reports a SPECint2000 result on the SuperHero 4 using SuperHero Unix V4.0 with SuperHero C V4.0 and SuperHero C++ V4.0, you may take that as an assertion by the vendor that the listed versions of Unix, C, and C++ will successfully compile and run the SPEC CINT2000 suite on the listed machine.

For systems that have not (yet) been reported by vendors, SPEC can provide limited technical support to resolve portability issues. See techsupport.txt for information.