Document Title: system_requirements.txt

                 Subject: SPEC CPU2000 Hardware and Software Requirements

            Last updated: 1 Nov 2000 8:00am jh
                          (To check for possible updates to this document,
                          please see http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000 ) 

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To run and install SPEC CPU2000, you will need:

   1. A computer system running a UNIX, Windows NT, or Windows 2000
      environment.  (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.  

        * 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.txt for more information.  If you have 
	  not yet installed the suite, you can find runspec.txt on the 
	  CD in /docs or \docs.nt.  After installation, runspec.txt may 
	  be found in $SPEC/docs/runspec.txt (Unix) or 
	  %SPEC%\docs.nt\runspec.txt (NT).

        * 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.

   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
	  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.
      


Portability Notes:

   SPEC CPU2000 is a source code benchmark, and portability of that source
   code is one of the chief goals of SPEC CPU2000.  SPEC has invested 
   substantial effort to make the benchmarks portable across a wide variety 
   of hardware architectures, operating systems, and compilers.  During the 
   development of SPEC CPU2000, testing was done on 7 different hardware 
   architectures, 11 versions of Unix (including 4 Linux versions) and two 
   versions of Windows/NT.  
   
   Nevertheless, certain portability problems are likely to occur 
   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 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 $SPEC/docs/techsupport.txt or %SPEC%\docs.nt\techsupport.txt
   for information.

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