Title
Benchmark health considered harmful
Abstract
In the past couple of years, a number of software and architectural techniques have been proposed for improving the performance of linked data structrues. These research ideas are often evaluated using the Olden benchmark suite [1]. Frequently, in such experients, the largest speed-up is attained for the benchmark called health. This article demonstrates that this benchmark is a micro-benchmark for enormous linked lists traversals, and not a good one at that. Given that linked lists of such size are not an efficient data structure, it is unlikely that this benchmark corresponds to any real program. Hence the benchmark should not be used. To demonstrate the inherent inefficiency in its use of linked data structures, the health program was modified algorithmically to generate the same output, while improving the execution time by over a factor of 200 on a 500Mhz Pentium II Xeon.
Year
DOI
Venue
2001
10.1145/503205.503206
SIGARCH Computer Architecture News
Keywords
DocType
Volume
data structrues,benchmark health,real program,pentium ii xeon,benchmark corresponds,efficient data structure,health program,olden benchmark suite,architectural technique,data structure,lists traversal,linked data
Journal
29
Issue
Citations 
PageRank 
3
22
0.95
References 
Authors
1
1
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Craig B. Zilles193294.74