Brian's Brain

This blog post references my article 'Double take: Reassessing x86 CPUs in embedded-system applications' in EDN's April 27, 2006 edition.

All four variants of SiSoftware’s Sandra 2005 suite contain 29 benchmark modules: 10 local, nine PDA/Smartphone, and 10 remote. The free Light variant includes 52 total local modules, 10 total PDA/Smartphone modules, and 11 total remote modules, and the Professional, Engineer, and Enterprise versions of the utility bump those numbers up to 75 (including Itanium-processor support), 20, and 75, respectively. They also include varying degrees of remote control, network and database support, and commercial-use rights; see the feature matrix on the manufacturer’s Web site for more information.

BAPCo’s SYSmark 2004 SE (Second Edition) software suite mimics a computer power user’s workflow. As the Web site states, it is “an application-based benchmark that reflects usage patterns of business users in the areas of Internet-content creation and office productivity.” Internet-content-creation benchmark applications include Adobe’s After Effects, Photoshop, and Premiere; Discreet’s (now Autodesk’s) 3ds max; Macro-media’s (now Adobe’s) Dreamweaver and Flash; Microsoft’s Windows Media Encoder, Network Associates’ (now McAfee's) VirusScan; and WinZip Computing’s (now WinZip International’s) WinZip. Office-productivity benchmark applications include Adobe’s Acrobat, Microsoft’s Office 2002 suite and Internet Explorer 6, ScanSoft’s (now Nuance Communications’) Dragon Naturally Speaking, McAfee VirusScan, and WinZip.

SYSmark 2004 SE provides useful information, but it’s often a challenge to install and operate. You need to make sure that the system doesn’t already have any of the benchmark-suite programs installed, or any software that might conflict with them. In my case, the Latitude D820 came from Dell with Symantec’s Norton SystemWorks preinstalled. Instead of uninstalling SystemWorks first, I plunged ahead and put SYSmark 2004 SE (forgetting about its included McAfee VirusScan) on the machine. The two antivirus programs didn’t happily coexist, leaving the system in a locked state, and I couldn’t uninstall either of them in Windows’ Safe Mode. Fortunately, System Restore saved the day.

I also learned the hard way that several other preinstalled system utilities, specifically the Intel Wireless Configuration program and the TPM (trusted-platform-module)-cognizant EMBASSY Trust Suite from Wave Systems, also conflict with SYSmark 2004 SE. Those hiccups appended to a delay in Dell’s shipping me the system, a faulty installation disc from BAPCo, and a multi-day travel interruption, with the result that it was nearly two weeks after the originally-targeted date when I finally started obtaining SYSmark 2004 SE data. Fortunately, everything eventually ran smoothly, and I quickly got the results I needed.

My blog post 'Double Take: Bountiful Benchmark Statistics' provides per-system benchmark results for you to view and download on the following Sandra 2004 and 2005 tests:

• Combined Performance Index Wizard
• CPU Arithmetic Benchmark
• CPU Multimedia Benchmark
• File System Benchmark
• Memory Bandwidth Benchmark, and
• Cache and Memory Benchmark.

I also provide screenshots of each benchmark result graph, so that you can compare the measured numbers against SiSoftware’s analyzed scores on various system building blocks I’ve highlighted.