Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation

SPEC/HPG announces major price cut for its SPEC OMP2001 benchmark suite

TAMPA, Fla., November 15, 2006 - SPEC's High-Performance Group (SPEC/HPG) announced last night at the SC06 conference that it has lowered the price of its SPEC OMP2001 performance evaluation software to $550 for commercial organizations and $250 for non-profit and educational institutions. The former pricing was $2,500 for commercial concerns and $750 for non-profit/educational.

"The use of multicore systems is increasing dramatically at both the departmental and personal levels," says Ron Lieberman, interim SPEC/HPG chair. "The new pricing makes SPEC OMP2001 more accessible to multi-core users who want a standardized tool for measuring performance on the newest generation of SMP (shared memory multiprocessor) systems."

SPEC OMP2001 is a benchmark suite for evaluating multi-threaded performance based on OpenMP applications. It uses a set of shared-memory, parallel-processing applications to measure the performance of the computing system�s processors, memory architecture, operating system and compiler. Two levels of workloads are available to characterize performance for either medium- or large-sized systems.

Looking to the future

In addition to announcing the price reductions, last night SPEC/HPG outlined development plans for SPEC MPI200X, an upcoming benchmark suite for measuring performance of systems running applications written under MPI (Message Passing Interface), the distributed computing API for cluster systems. No release date was given for the MPI-based benchmark.

For more information and to order

Additional information on SPEC/HPG and its benchmarks can be found at www.spec.org/hpg/. SPEC OMP2001 can be ordered immediately at the new price by visiting www.spec.org/order.html.

About SPEC

SPEC is a non-profit organization that establishes, maintains and endorses standardized benchmarks for the newest generation of high-performance computers. Its membership comprises leading computer hardware and software vendors, universities, and research organizations worldwide. For more information, contact Dianne Rice, SPEC, 6585 Merchant Place, Ste. 100, Warrenton, VA 20187, USA; phone: 540-349-7878; fax: 540-349-5992; e-mail: info@spec.org; web: http://www.spec.org.

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Bob Cramblitt, Erin Hatfield
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919-481-4599; cramco@cramco.com