Driving Linux-based Benchmarking With Sandtorg
We have invested a lot of resources into enriching the Linux hardware experience particularly by improving Linux performance benchmarks and taking the necessary steps to make Linux-based benchmarking an attractive offer for hardware and software vendors. We have also strived to ensure that open-source developers understand the importance of automated testing and that they have the proper tools to fully automate tests relevant to them when looking for performance regressions and other conditions that otherwise would not easily be caught in an efficient and effective manner. At the same time, we have sought to standardize the benchmarking process of Linux desktops to make it easier for end-users and companies when looking to gauge how well something works on Linux. The Phoronix Test Suite has made immense progress over the past year, but today it is now time to expose our latest endeavor, Sandtorg.
It was nearly one year ago that we released Phoronix Test Suite 1.0, our Linux-based testing platform for software and hardware validation, and since then we have only pushed significantly harder in better enabling Linux benchmarking. While Linux testing is our lead focus with the Phoronix Test Suite, this GPLv3 software has been brought to OpenSolaris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Mac OS X.
We have delivered quarterly, stable releases that have added new features like an easy-to-use GUI, reference system comparisons, drag-and-drop benchmarking, and dozens of other features with hundreds of other changes to our automated testing framework. Outside of the Phoronix Test Suite itself, our partners have delivered incredible benchmarks to strap into the Phoronix Test Suite with involvement from other projects.
A number of noteworthy companies have also begun using the Phoronix Test Suite for their internal testing. The community also continues to have a good time benchmarking their own systems and thousands of results can be found on Phoronix Global. A number of other publications also have used the Phoronix Test Suite for their own Linux testing, among which are Tom's Hardware, IDG/TechWorld, and The Inquirer. The Phoronix Test Suite is also appearing in distribution repositories like Mandriva, Ubuntu, and Fedora.
While we are pleased with where the Phoronix Test Suite is at today and what has been accomplished, there still is a lot to be garnered. Phoronix Test Suite 1.8 was just released earlier this month, but in fact, work on the next major release is well underway -- and has been for the past few months. This next release will be known as Phoronix Test Suite 2.0 and has been codenamed Sandtorg.
With Phoronix Test Suite 2.0 there will be a number of enhancements to this testing software, but this is not a simple package update. Phoronix Test Suite 2.0 is planned to encompass more than 100 test profiles and 50 test suites along with a number of improvements to the graphical user interface, the generated graphs / result viewer, and new testing capabilities. Beyond that and many other improvements to the software itself, we will be introducing Phoromatic and PTS Linux Live. Phoromatic will bolster the Phoronix Test Suite within the enterprise environment, while PTS Linux Live we will be venturing into the realm of providing a Linux distribution that is highly optimized for benchmarking/testing purposes.