benchmarks/hint 98.06.12 NetBSD

HINT (Hierarchical INTegration) is a computer benchmarking tool developed at the Scalable Computing Laboratory of the Ames Laboratory, a US Department of Energy laboratory. Unlike traditional benchmarks, HINT neither fixes the size of the problem nor the calculation time. Instead, it uses a rigorously defined measure called QUIPS (QUality Improvements Per Second).

The output of HINT is data which can be plotted (the gnuplot graphics package is useful for plotting HINT output). The plot shows the speed of the computation as the size of the problem increases. The HINT graph shows the peak processor speed and the effects of different levels of cache and memory on processing speed. See http://www.scl.ameslab.gov/Projects/HINT/ for more information and an on-line database of HINT results.

HINT also outputs a single number which is the integral of the HINT curve. This number, called NetQUIPS, can be used for general comparison between machines.