Phoronix Test Suite 5.6 M1 Brings Stress-Run, Libframetime Parsing

Written by Michael Larabel in Phoronix Test Suite on 14 January 2015 at 12:00 AM EST. 1 Comment
PHORONIX TEST SUITE
The first development release of Phoronix Test Suite 5.6 "Dedilovo" is now available. This release brings exciting new functionality to our open-source, cross-platform benchmarking framework.

Phoronix Test Suite 5.4 was released in early December with an overhauled built-in Phoromatic implementation that's now powering LinuxBenchmarking.com (A Walkthrough Of The New 32 System Open-Source Linux Benchmarking Test Farm). With Phoronix Test Suite 5.6 the aim is to have this Q1'2015 release be ready by late February or early March. During this development cycle the focus is on continuing to refine the built-in Phoromatic server/client functionality while continuing to add in other features to our software for automated benchmarking primarily on Linux, BSD, OS X, and Solaris systems.

With Phoronix Test Suite 5.6 Milestone 1, one of the new features is the new phoronix-test-suite stress-run command for linux stress testing, burning-in systems, and other purposes. The stress-run sub-command is basically used for those not interested in performance measurement but rather to load up the system with multiple tests running concurrently. The stress-run command allows for multiple tests to be carried out in parallel if you want to push your disk, CPU, and graphics to the limits simultaneously. This was added for a Phoronix Test Suite enterprise customer but has many potential uses and the number of benchmarking threads to run simultaneously is completely configurable. The stress-run command can also be used in conjunction with the TOTAL_LOOP_TIME environment variable for stressing the system a given number of minutes/hours. See the aforelinked article for more details on Phoronix Test Suite's stress-run.

Phoronix Test Suite 5.6 M1 also contains various minor enhancements and updates around the Phoromatic Server, which is in good standing and being used by PTS enterprise customers for production testing beyond our own LinuxBenchmarking.com test farm, with the data soon being live publicly. One of the bigger Phoromatic Server enhancements for this 5.6 development update is the new tracker interface page.

Last but certainly not least, the Phoronix Test Suite now has optimized support for parsing libframetime outputs. Libframetime dumps per-frame timing information for OpenGL GLX/EGL tests that don't expoose such information. Libframetime is currently how the Metro Redux OpenGL 4 Linux benchmarks were added to overcome shortcomings of the game's built-in benchmarking mode. The Phoronix Test Suite pts-core now has support for easily parsing the generic dumps. Over on OpenBenchmarking.org is the pts/libframetime base test profile that provides the libframetime.so binary built for the system and can be extended by other test profiles (like Metro Redux and other games) via the Phoronix Test Suite built-in and long-standing Cascading Test Profiles functionality.

Stay tuned for more Phoronix Test Suite 5.6 development updates over the next several weeks. You can also follow its development via Phoronix Test Suite on GitHub or by downloading at Phoronix-Test-Suite.com. Commercial support, custom engineering, and other professional services are available by contacting us.
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About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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