Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!ucsd!ucbvax!hplabs!hp-pcd!hpcvlx!harry
From: harry@hpcvlx.HP.COM (Harry Phinney)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Benchmarking X "stuff"
Message-ID: <100920037@hpcvlx.HP.COM>
Date: 30 Dec 88 18:50:49 GMT
References: <10394@admin.mips.COM>
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Co., Corvallis, OR, USA
Lines: 38

percy@mips.COM (Percy Irani) writes:

> (I may be opening a can of worms - but here goes..)
> How does one "benchmark" (note the quotes please before you flame..)
> X software/terminals?

With appropriate benchmark programs :-) More seriously, there are some
benchmarks used within the X testing working group of the X Consortium.
These benchmarks, while not comprehensive, do offer some gauge of
performance.  I do not know if (or when) these benchmarks may be made
public (Bob, could you comment?).

>     2) X code performance
>	(This may sound silly, as the code is the same, yet when people
>	 want to decide as to which system/terminal to buy to run 
>	 X stuff, could make a difference.....)

This doesn't sound at all silly.  If you think all server implementations
on the MIT distribution tape are equal in performance, look again.  Some
of the servers there have had a lot of work done to optimize them for the
hardware they run on, and their performance may surprise you.  In addition,
you would want to test the commercially available servers and libraries
which may differ from the MIT distribution.

>	   4-1) Interconnectivity (X-Connectathon?)

An X-Connectathon is a highly visible, but very imprecise test of
conformance to the X protocol.  There are test suites being developed
by the above-mentioned working group which test all Xlib calls, and
test servers for protocol conformance.  These test suites are not yet
complete.

> It may that after all it may not a good idea after all to do "benchmarks"
> in the X world - but at least let's know WHY!!

I think it's a _great_ idea !

Harry Phinney