Case Study: Reliable Benchmark Results Lead to Good Design Decisions

To paraphrase business guru Peter Drucker, "If you can't measure it, you can't design it."  In the world of embedding processing, processor developers and users alike rely on benchmarks to measure and assess the capabilities of embedded processors on their target applications.  Benchmark results enable processor developers to understand where they stand in relation to their design targets and their competitors.  And in order to build competitive product and get to market quickly, system and SoC designers need reliable benchmark results to gain insight into the relative capabilities of candidate processing engines and make design decisions with confidence.

Since 1994, users of embedded processors have trusted BDTI benchmark results in making key procurement decisions.  For example, one manufacturer of communications infrastructure equipment now regularly asks its vendors to provide BDTI Certified™ benchmark results.  These results enable the company to assess the capabilities of candidate processing engines quickly and reliably on a common, well-understood workload.

To streamline its work the company uses the BDTI Benchmark Information Service™.  BDTI's Benchmark Information Service delivers a regularly updated database of BDTI Certified benchmark results under an annual subscription. Results include cycle counts, speed, memory usage, and cost-performance for over 40 processor chips and cores on the BDTI DSP Kernel Benchmarks. The service enables all users of benchmark results—executives, engineers, marketing personnel—to have immediate access to information critical in performing competitive analysis. The service includes a license to BDTI's Benchmark Analysis Tool™, a flexible analysis package that runs under Microsoft Excel. The Benchmark Analysis Tool allows users to quickly create customized comparisons of processors. Users can apply custom weightings to individual benchmarks to approximate the workloads of specific applications.  A user may, for example, use weightings to extrapolate from the benchmark data to a variety of use-cases, using BDTI’s results to develop metrics specific to the application at hand.

For information about the BDTI Benchmark Information Service and how it can help you, please contact Jeremy Giddings at BDTI (giddings@BDTI.com).