The Many Phoronix Test Suite Improvements In 2018 For Open-Source Benchmarking

It was another busy year for the Phoronix Test Suite in 2018, which also marked ten years since the public debut of the Phoronix Test Suite for open-source, cross-platform automated performance benchmarking.

Some of the highlights from the Phoronix Test Suite in 2018 included:

- Rewritten Windows support. The Phoronix Test Suite Windows support is now effectively at parity to the Phoronix Test Suite on Linux, BSD, and macOS. The modern Windows support is focused on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 and newer. The Phoronix Test Suite Windows support is now production-grade.

- Overhauled BSD support, particularly for FreeBSD-based operating systems seeing better test profile compatibility and a various hardware/software detection improvements.

- Better distribution of "local" tests/suites not part of OpenBenchmarking.org but present on Phoromatic Servers on the intranet/LAN to be automatically distributed when needed to Phoronix Test Suite clients. There were also other improvements for offline testing / running "behind the firewall".

- The ability to create new test profiles via the Phoromatic Server web interface. Also other Phoromatic Server web interface improvements around search and other features.

- An integrated back-up module for making it easy to backup and restore Phoronix Test Suite / Phoromatic data across its different locations.

- A number of usability improvements from the text-based user interface with better terminal color handling, inline text-based result graphs, tab-based auto-completion, and other improvements to "pretty it up" from the CLI.

- Initial RISC-V support, with basic tests now working on at least for SiFive RISC-V benchmarking.

- IBM POWER9 architecture support improvements.

- Various ARM support enhancements, particularly for Ampere eMAG, Cavium ThunderX, and NVIDIA Tegra platforms.

- The phoronix/pts official Docker image for running benchmarks quickly and easily in a containerized environment.

- Many new and updated test profiles.

Looking ahead to 2019 there will be more work on improving the Phoromatic Server web interface, continued BSD/Windows/macOS improvements to keep it to parity with the Linux support, and other usability and polishing. There are also a great number of improvements I have planned for OpenBenchmarking.org when time allows. Of course, we offer commercial support and custom engineering services to cater improvements and new functionality depending upon the needs of your organization.