%A J. Feder
%T The Evolution of UNIX System Performance
%J AT&T Bell Laboratories Technical Journal
%V 63.8
%D October 1984
%P 1791
%X The definitive work on UNIX development from the team who built
it.  A good article giving an historic view on benchmarking in the
Bell Labs.  Shows the improvement gained over various issues of UNIX
and improvement in performance brought about by changing algorithms
to suit new hardware.

%A D. F. Hinnant
%T Benchmarking UNIX systems
%J BYTE
%V 9.8
%D August 1984
%P 132
%X This is an article entirely about benchmarking UNIX systems.  The
benchmarks measure performance at three different levels, the system
level, the command level and multi-user level.  The benchmarks are
constructed with the minimum of overhead and this article describes
them and the results achieved on various systems.

%A A. S. Tanenbaum
%T Two programs, many UNIX systems.
%J EUUG
%V 3.4
%D Winter 1983
%P 24-26
%X A comparison of two benchmarks run on many systems.  The article
shows the results of two test programs. The two test programs are run
on a wide variety of machines from single-user to multi-users.  One
test program measures CPU/memory speed and the other measures I/O
speed.  Care must be taken when interpreting the results. Some
vendors may have carefully selected comparisons to show how fast a
particular machine is.  The article actually said that "figures don't
lie, but liars figure".

%A B. Clark
%T UNIX - the horse before the cart
%J Computer Systems
%V 4/11
%D November 1984
%P 85-87
%X Machine architectures built specifically to run Unix.  A
description of a machine designed to run Unix, rather than tailoring
Unix to suit the hardware.  The article discusses hardware features
which complement Unix, especially the advantages of using a RISC
architecture with many registers for the Unix machine.  Some crude
performance figures are given of the RISC machine against a VAX
11/780 and a Motorola 68000.

%A Bob Critchlow
%T Optimising Unix performance
%J Computer Systems
%V 3/11
%D November 1983
%P 73-76
%X Comparing Intel System 286/310 performances running Unix to other
machines.  A review of the Intel System 286/310 computers which run
many versions of Unix. The results of six types of benchmarks, run on
six different manufacturers machines are presented. This article is
generally a 'plug' for Intel - the author Bob Critchlow is Intel's
technical systems marketing manager.

%A Mike Pearce
%T Who needs high capacities
%J Computer Systems
%V 3/11
%I Techpress
%C Bromley
%D November 1983
%P 4
%X An article which primarily discusses the electro-mechanical
features of a range of Winchester disk drives.  It makes passing
reference to Unix's need for a high performance disk and plots
transfer rate against access time for a range of disk systems to show
that disk access time is a critical factor.

%A M. K. McKusick
%A W. N. Joy
%A S. J. Leffler
%A R. S. Fabry
%T A Fast File System for Unix
%J Technical Report #8
%I Computer Systems Research Group, Dept of EECS, Berkeley, Ca.
%X This paper sets out to describe the differences in file systems
between version 4.1 and 4.2.  This paper addresses itself to the
enhancements and changes made to the Berkeley UNIX version 4.1 to
bring it to version 4.2, it discusses changes to block sizes and
access algorithms and related subjects.

%A L. F. Cabrera
%T Benchmarking Unix - A comparative study
%B Experimental Computer Performance Evaluation
%I North-Holland Publishing Company
%P 205-215
%X Compares UNIX performance at the user level, performance is
defined as response time against number of processes.  Article
explains the method and results of the high level benchmarking of
three UNIX systems. Three 'typical' jobs were devised and run
periodically on each system while that system is loaded with real
processes.  Response times for these jobs are marked against a number
of processes.  This is a useful article. It also notes that it would
be better to have a load that is reproducible on any system, rather
than rely on real loads whose characteristics are subject to
variation over the systems.

%A E. D. Lazowska
%T The Benchmarking, Tuning and Analytic Modelling of VAX/VMS
%J Performance Evaluation Review
%V 8.3
%C Department of Computer Science, University of Washington, Seattle
%D Fall 1979
%P 57-64
%X Benchmarking, tuning and modelling the DEC's VMS executive with a
strong emphasise in modelling.  This work arises from the performance
problems which the author encountered. For example, the response time
for simple editing requests takes several minutes; it takes between
fifteen minutes to three hours for compilation and the system
capacity is four active users. An analytic model was designed for
performance prediction. The author has presented a good analytic
model as the predictions from the model are very close to the actual
results obtained.

%T Benchmark report : Datasystem 355
%J Performance Evaluation Review, Sigmetrics
%V 9.3
%D Fall 1980
%P 7-30
%X A report of the benchmark carried out on 13 users of DEC's 11/34
based systems.
This article is about benchmarking the DEC Datasystem 355. It
contains the benchmark process, the benchmark results, details about
the system and its peripherals and a summary of user comments.
Article looks into how well the equipment performs in specific
applications and that performance compares with other computing
systems. It also concerns with subjective factors like ease of use,
versatility and the support service. The benchmark measures speed and
response time against the number of terminals. The response time
increases as the number of terminals has increased.

%A Robert G. Estell
%T Benchmarks and Watermarks
%J Performance Evaluation Review, Sigmetrics
%V 9.3
%D Fall 1980
%X The article consists of the author's opinions and some points to
consider when benchmarking the performance measure of computers.
Include some valuable points.

%A S. Spanier
%T Sun-3 Benchmarks
%J Sun Microsystems internal memo
%D August 1985
%X A wide range of benchmarks results comparing the SUN-3 machine and
other machines like IBM PC, VAX, APOLLO.
This article characterises the performance of the SUN-3 machine and
provides an aid for people choosing a workstation. Benchmark, in this
article, is defined as a test of the performance of one or more
elements of a computer system.  A wide range of benchmarks were
carried out to show how good the SUN-3 performances are as compared
with some other machines.

%A David Hough
%T Weitek 1164/5 Floating Point Accelerators
%X Article is about the Floating Point Accelerator (FLA) measured at
the SUN.  It talks about the performance of SUN-3 Floating Point
Accelerator.  Suggested to use the Linpack benchmark for measuring
performance on scientific and engineering floating point calculations
because it measures the performance of hardware and compiler in an
indisputable way on a realistic computation, and the Livermore loop
benchmarks for larger inner loops.

%A T. Lang
%A J. P. Newbury
%A D. E. P. Watkins
%T Experiences in Benchmarking for the Selection of an Interactive
System
%J Software - Practice and Experience
%V 12
%P 531-542
%X Report on how a benchmark was constructed to assist in the
selection of a general purpose interactive computing system.
The article describes the stages in constructing a benchmark to
measure the hardware and software performances on a number of
computer systems. The problems the authors encountered and their
experiences gained in this exercise are also described in the paper.
Provides some assistance to anyone starting on a benchmarking
exercise for the first time.

%A B.A. Wichmann
%A H.J. Curnow
%T A Synthetic Benchmark: Whetstone
%J Computer Journal
%V 19 No: 1
%D February 1976
%P 43
%X Presents the background to the Whetstone benchmark and how it was
constructed originally to measure the performance of the ALGOL
compiler.  The article describes the stages in constructing a
benchmark to measure the performances of a High Level Language, such
as ALGOL on a number of computer systems. The benchmark takes a
number of commonly used statements and checks their performance
(timed events). The benchmark has also been translated in other High
Level Languages. There are a set of four performance measures that
are used.  Regarded as a 'standard' test for any benchmark suite of
programs.

%A R.P. Weicker
%T Dhrystone: A Synthetic systems programming benchmark
%J Communications of the ACM
%V 27 No: 10
%D October 1984.
%P 1013
%X Presents the background to the Dhrystone benchmark and how it was
constructed to measure the performance of executing different types
of High Level Language programming statements.
The article describes the stages in constructing a benchmark to
measure the performances of a High Level Language on a number of
computer systems.  This is basically very similar to the Whetstone
benchmark, but perhaps more widely used as a measure of performance.
The benchmark takes a number of commonly used statements (a mix of
statements) then 'times' them to evaluate their performance. The
actual benchmark can be run in two modes, with and without the use of
'extra' registers at execution time. It has been run on many machines
using the UNIX operating system.  Regarded as a 'standard' test for
any benchmark suite of programs.

%A P. Marvit.
%A M. Nair.
%T Benchmark Confessions.
%B The UNIX System - Encyclopaedia.
%I Yates Ventures.
%D 1984.
%P 63.
%X Presents the whole concept of benchmarking UNIX systems and what
factors need to be considered beforehand and sets guidelines on the
evaluation of results.  The article describes the philosophy and
practice behind the whole concept of benchmarking UNIX systems. It
states that benchmarking UNIX is, at best, problematic, and at worst,
a gross distortion of reality. It points out the loop holes that can
easily be entered by misinterpreting the results obtained and warns
against these by setting guidelines on how to use the results.  This
methodology would be very useful in our own work when we come to
analyse our results. It also points out the h/w and s/w
considerations to be taken into account when constructing your
benchmark.

%A P. Marvit
%T A UNIX Benchmark Blitzkrieg
%B The UNIX System - Encyclopaedia
%I Yates Ventures
%D 1984
%P 69
%X Presents a set of six different benchmarks for UNIX systems.  The
article looks into the benchmark tests and briefly comments on the
result obtained, including the 'Whetstone' benchmark. It shows a
table of results obtained on several machines. But otherwise it is
just listings of the benchmarks themselves.