The Top Features Of Phoronix Test Suite 4.8

The official release of Phoronix Test Suite 4.8 (codenamed "Sokndal") is expected in the next week. With the imminent release of our industry-leading open-source automated benchmarking platform for Linux / BSD / OS X / Solaris, here's a look at some of the top features coming. Aside from just those carrying out the benchmarks, many of the features also benefit those viewing the results -- such as Phoronix.com readers.

Some of the top features I have worked on for the Phoronix Test Suite 4.8 cycle, which represents our major release for the Q3'2013 period, include:

- Minimum and maximum test results reporting for OpenBenchmarking.org test profiles that choose to take advantage upon new interfaces for exposing such values beyond the average performance results. These new min/max results for now are commonly being exposed for OpenGL gaming benchmarks. The minimum/maximum performance results are then rendered on the performance result graphs as complementary data.

- OpenGL frame latency / jitter reporting is now supported as a complementary data result similar to the min/max reporting. Test profiles can optionally choose to expose an array of values that expose latency in OpenGL game/application rendering on a frame-by-frame basis. These data points are then rendered to a separate line graph to complement the existing min/avg/max frames-per-second reporting that's long been common to the Phoronix Test Suite. Common OpenBenchmarking.org test profiles have already been adapted to optionally support this new functionality.

- New hardware/software identification and reporting. Phoronix Test Suite 4.8 has improved hardware detection with regard to recognizing many vendor AIB (Add-In-Board) partners for NVIDIA GeForce and AMD Radeon graphics cards, better detection of the latest AMD/Intel/NVIDIA/ARM hardware, and an assortment of other improvements. The Phodevi (Phoronix Device Interface) library also has support for reading new sysfs/debugfs interfaces that have been added on recent kernel releases (up to and including Linux 3.11).

- Support for HipHop Virtual Machine 2.1, Facebook's alternative to the reference PHP5 implementation and run-time.

- Reporting of other various system details and attributes.

- Various bug-fixes and minor enhancements.

After the Phoronix Test Suite 4.8 release, development work will begin on Phoronix Test Suite 5.0 for the open-source community as well as our enterprise customers. There's a lot to look forward to in the coming months!