SPEC committee begins work on power benchmark for web servers

WARRENTON, Va., May 20, 2008 – The SPECweb committee of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corp. (SPEC) has begun work on a new benchmark to measure power consumption for web servers.

"Power used by data centers is expected to double in the next five years and web servers will likely play a prominent role in that growth," says Rema Hariharan, SPECweb chair. "A SPEC benchmark could help abate this trend and establish more power-efficient practices."

The new benchmark will be based on the industry-standard SPECweb2005. It will report power use for both the web server and disk subsystem running a real-world workload derived from SPECweb2005.

SPEC expects that IT managers of data centers and web farms will use the benchmark to analyze power usage at different load levels to increase overall efficiency and to evaluate web server products. The SPECweb committee plans to enable users to configure the workload to match individual requirements. On the vendor side, the benchmark will be used for development of more power-efficient web server products and competitive comparisons.

Current participants in developing the benchmark include AMD, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, HP, IBM, Intel and Sun. Representatives from the SPECpower committee, developer of the recently released SPECpower_ssj2008 benchmark for servers, are also providing input for the benchmark. The SPECweb committee welcomes participation from vendors, universities, R&D organizations, users and others interested in establishing the best possible power evaluation tools for web servers.

The SPECweb power benchmark is expected at the end of this year or the beginning of 2009. For more information, contact the SPEC office: info@spec.org.

About SPEC

The Standard Performance Evaluation Corp. is a non-profit organization that establishes, maintains and endorses standardized benchmarks used to evaluate performance for the newest generation of computing systems. Its membership comprises more than 80 leading computer hardware and software vendors, educational institutions, research organizations, and government agencies worldwide. For more information, visit www.spec.org or contact the SPEC office by phone: 540-349-7878, fax: 540-349-5992, or email: info@spec.org .

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SPEC committee begins work on power benchmark for web servers

About SPEC