spec (redirected from spec'ing)

(1) See specs and specification.

(2) (SPEC) (Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation, Warrenton, VA, www.specbench.org) An organization founded in 1988 to establish standard benchmarks for computers. Its first benchmark was a single CPU rating known as the "SPECmark," in which one SPECmark was equivalent in performance to a VAX 11/780. Although SPEC benchmarks continue to rate CPUs, SPEC has a variety of benchmarks to measure graphics subsystems as well as Java, and Web, mail, application and file servers.

A handful of CPU ratings follow to show a sample of the numbers in both the CPU2000 system and the earlier CPU95 system, which itself superseded CPU92 (SPECint92 and SPECfp92). See benchmark.

                      Integer    Floating Point

  SPEC CPU2000        CINT2000   CFP2000
  3 GHz Pentium 4         1032      1092
  450 MHz RS/6000          286       426
  1 GHz Sun Fire           485       718

  SPEC CPU95          SPECint95  SPECfp95
  266 MHz Pentium II       10.8       6.8
  250 MHz PPC 604e         11.1       7.8
  300 MHz UltraSPARC-2     10.4      14.5

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1.	(benchmark, body)	SPEC - Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. A non-profit corporation registered in California formed to "establish, maintain and endorse a standardized set of relevant benchmarks that can be applied to the newest generation of high-performance computers" (from SPEC's bylaws). The founders believe that the user community will benefit greatly from an objective series of applications-oriented tests, which can serve as common reference points and be considered during the evaluation process. SPEC develops suites of benchmarks intended to measure computer performance. These are available to the public for a fee covering development and administration costs. The current (14 Nov 94) SPEC benchmark suites are: CINT92 (CPU intensive integer benchmarks); CFP92 (CPU intensive floating-point benchmarks); SDM (UNIX Software Development Workloads); SFS (System level file server (NFS) workload). Results. SPEC also publishes a quarterly report of SPEC news and results, The SPEC Newsletter. Some issues are here. There is a FAQ about SPEC here.
2.		Spec - A specification language. It expresses black box interface specifications for large distributed systems with real-time constraints. It incorporates conceptual models, inheritance and the event model. It is a descendant of MSG.84. ["An Introduction to the Specification Language Spec", V. Berzins et al, IEEE Software 7(2):74-84 (Mar 1990)].
3.		spec - specification