Redesigned SPECweb2005 benchmark
replaces industry-standard SPECweb99
New software provides three real-world workloads;
dynamic content now implemented in PHP and JSP
WARRENTON, Va., June 22, 2005 – The Standard Performance Evaluation
Corp. (SPEC) has released SPECweb2005, new software for evaluating the performance
of web servers. SPECweb2005 replaces SPECweb99 and SPECweb99_SSL, the acknowledged
worldwide standards for web server performance evaluation.
SPECweb2005 is a complete departure from its predecessors, with a new client
harness, new workloads, and dynamic scripts that reflect current practices
of the web development community. It is designed for web server hardware
and software vendors who want to test performance, and users seeking performance
data for purchasing decisions. SPEC member companies involved in developing
SPECweb2005 include AMD, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Sun Microsystems.
Three representative workloads
SPECweb2005 emulates users sending browser requests over broadband Internet
connections to a web server. It provides three new workloads based on analysis
of web server logs and studies of sites from the web browser side:
- a banking site that transfers encrypted information using HTTPS;
- an e-commerce site that uses unencrypted HTTP when browsing and
secure HTTPS when the user enters the shopping cart; and
- a vendor support site that provides downloads – such as driver
updates and documentation – over HTTP.
“The workloads have been carefully designed to match real-world experience,” says
David Morse, chair of the SPECweb2005 project committee. “The inherent ‘think
time’ between web page requests is now modeled, as are the effects of browser
caching. The number of checks, products and downloads scale up proportionately
as the traffic to the web server increases.”
Portability out of the box
SPECweb2005 ships with the dynamic content implemented in PHP and JSP, two
web server scripting languages in widespread use today. The benchmark’s test
harness is written in Java for clean, portable code.
“The standardized languages in which SPECweb2005 is written will help ensure
that little or no compilation is needed, and that the benchmark will work
on future platforms,” says Morse.
The benchmark’s metric, also called SPECweb2005, is the mean of results
from all three workloads, normalized to a reference platform. Each workload
measures the number of simultaneous user sessions a web server can support
while still meeting stringent quality-of-service and error-rate requirements.
SPECweb2005 results are not comparable to those of its predecessors, SPECweb99
and SPECweb99_SSL. There will be a three-month transition between the old
and new benchmarks during which SPEC will accept, review and publish results
from all three. After that period, only SPECweb2005 results will be accepted
for publication.
Initial results and pricing
Initial performance results for SPECweb2005 are available on SPEC’s web
site at www.spec.org/web2005/results/. SPECweb2005
licensees may publish their own results in accordance with SPEC’s run and
reporting rules.
SPECweb2005 is available now on CD-ROM from SPEC for $1,200 for new licensees,
$600 for upgrades, and $300 for eligible non-profit organizations.
About SPEC
SPEC (www.spec.org) is a non-profit organization that establishes,
maintains and endorses standardized benchmarks to measure the performance
of 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: www.spec.org.
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Press contacts: Bob Cramblitt, Erin Hatfield
Cramblitt & Company
919-481-4599; info@cramco.com
