SPECpower_ssj2008 is the first industry-standard SPEC benchmark that evaluates the power and performance characteristics of volume server class computers. With SPECpower_ssj2008, SPEC is defining server power measurement standards in the same way they have done for performance.
The drive to create the power and performance benchmark comes from the recognition that the IT industry, computer manufacturers, and governments are increasingly concerned with the energy use of servers. Currently, many vendors report some energy efficiency figures, but these are often not directly comparable due to differences in workload, configuration, test environment, etc. Development of this benchmark provides a means to measure power (at the AC input) in conjunction with a performance metric. This should help IT managers to consider power characteristics along with other selection criteria to increase the efficiency of data centers.
The initial benchmark addresses only one subset of server workloads: the performance of server side Java. It exercises the CPUs, caches, memory hierarchy and the scalability of shared memory processors (SMPs) as well as the implementations of the JVM (Java Virtual Machine), JIT (Just-In-Time) compiler, garbage collection, threads and some aspects of the operating system. The benchmark runs on a wide variety of operating systems and hardware architectures and should not require extensive client or storage infrastructure. Additional workloads are planned.
Since this is the first power-performance benchmark, a general methodology for power measurement has been documented to assist other benchmark developers interested in measuring power and in the hopes of establishing a common set of practices in this new area of benchmarking.