Suldal Is Out; Randaberg & Unterschleissheim Are Next

Written by Michael Larabel in Phoronix on 23 July 2012 at 08:51 AM EDT. 2 Comments
PHORONIX
As most have seen by now, Phoronix Test Suite 4.0 surfaced this morning (codenamed "Suldal") while the next Linux benchmarking projects under development for release by year's end are Randaberg and Unterschleissheim.

As said in today's press release:
Phoronix Media is committing today to delivering two new software products in Q4'2012: Phoronix Test Suite 4.2-Randaberg and a new software product currently being developed under the codename "Unterschleissheim", an original Linux-based performance research operating system for analyzing hardware performance with a fully-standardized software stack. Phoronix Test Suite 4.2 will continue to push new levels of automated testing and autonomous test-driven development. The "Unterschleissheim" project will build upon the concepts and technology developed for the experimental PTS Desktop Live initiative in years prior to create a compelling Linux OS for facilitating direct hardware performance comparisons. Revised versions of the Phoromatic and OpenBenchmarking.org software will also soon be entering closed-beta to select partners.
Phoronix Test Suite 4.2-Randaberg will pack in another close to six months worth of advancements for Phoronix Test Suite customers and the open-source community. There's a lot of good stuff to talk about later.

Also very exciting is "Unterschleissheim", which is a brand new completely re-written successor to PTS Desktop Live and built upon entirely new technologies. A few months back I finally conceived a new Phoronix Test Suite user-interface that's quite compelling and driven by HTML5 via PHP's built-in web-server. Details to be revealed in conjunction with Randaberg's development.
PTS Desktop Live is a Linux distribution designed to provide a free software platform for carrying out system tests and hardware benchmarks in an automated, reproducible, and effective manner. PTS Desktop Live is designed around the Phoronix Test Suite with the operating system itself consisting of a stripped down Linux environment, then built upon that is the Phoronix Test Suite with its test profiles and suites. This distribution is not a standard Linux desktop with the normal throng of packages. Testing with PTS Desktop Live is intended to be via a Live DVD or Live USB (i.e. flash drive or memory card) environment. PTS Desktop Live makes it very easy to deploy the Phoronix Test Suite across an array of systems, isolates any software differences when seeking to perform hardware comparisons, and is designed to be very easy to carry out these Linux benchmarks even for a first-time Linux user.

And yes, more OpenBenchmarking.org and Phoromatic developments are in the pipe too. Busy times ahead!

Download Suldal at Phoronix-Test-Suite.com. Below is the official but not exhaustive change-log for Phoronix Test Suite 4.0. As usual, comments, feature requests, new commercial custom engineering engagements, etc are welcome by contacting us.

Phoronix Test Suite 4.0
23 July 2012


- pts-core: Initial implementation of the PTS4 Local Results Viewer
- pts-core: Initial command of ob-test-profile-analyze
- pts-core: Fix for installing Ubuntu external dependencies in a headless mode
- pts-core: Disable webui since it won't be ready until PTS 4.2
- pts-core: External dependencies fix for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11
- phodevi: Additional fall-back support when GPU driver doesn't expose all standard mode-setting modes
- phodevi: Support for detecting and reading the version of the Cinnamon Desktop Environment
- timed_screenshot: Overhaul of the timed screenshot PTS module
- timed_screenshot: Compress PNG images

Phoronix Test Suite 4.0 Milestone 4
29 June 2012


- pts-core: Support download caches at /run/media/*/*/download-cache/
- pts-core: Set SKIP_TEST_SUPPORT_CHECKS=1 environment variable for debugging purposes to run tests on unsupported platforms
- pts_Graph: Only render as much room for pts_OverViewGraph as there are for what will be rendered (bar graph values)
- phodevi: Ensure DVD drives don't get reported on BSD operating systems when requesting disk drives
- phodevi: Improve graphics processor detection on Solaris 11 11/11 for non-NVIDIA GPUs
- system_monitor: Add support for handling i915_energy monitor reading in microJoules for each test run
- system_monitor: Place timer support for individual test runs within the module

Phoronix Test Suite 4.0 Milestone 3
22 May 2012


- pts-core: Reformat user configuration input on test run
- pts-core: Improve no-network support handling
- pts-core: Streamline detailed-system-info collection
- pts-core: Invalid command improvements
- pts-core: Various alterations
- pts-core: Make greater use of trigger_error
- pts-core: Generate more relevant default result identifier strings based on subsystems under test on empty input
- phodevi: Support to attempt to detect the file-system underneath ecryptfs
- pts-core: Debian control script update

Phoronix Test Suite 4.0 Milestone 2
29 April 2012


- pts-core: Better recognize some open-source vs. closed-source graphics card/driver combination comparisons
- pts-core: Fix potential crash in list-test-usage command
- pts-core: Support for detecting FSGSBASE and RDRAND on Intel Ivy Bridge
- pts-core: When detecting a CPU comparison, report the detailed CPU system table information
- pts-core: When detecting a GPU/OpenGL comparison, report the detailed GPU system table information
- pts-core: Fix PRESET_OPTIONS failing when specifying an option value rather than its index
- pts-core: Archive vdpauinfo when available
- phodevi: Detection support for Intel IOC (Intel Offline Compiler) OpenCL SDK
- phodevi: Support for detecting GLAMOR (Intel OpenGL-accelerated X.Org Driver) acceleration
- pts_Graph: Fix rounding issue on pts tables that are very wide
- pts_Graph: Add SideViewTable
- documentation: Add a basic text README to the root phoronix-test-suite directory

Phoronix Test Suite 4.0 Milestone 1
12 April 2012


- pts-core: Add AutoSortRunQueue option that by default automatically sorts the test execution queue to run similar tests together
- pts-core: Expose more verbose information within detailed-system-info command
- pts-core: Remove recover-run command since with new PTS4 changes the finish-run command will provide the same functionality
- pts-core: Track the CPU scaling governor configuration between test runs
- pts-core: Report 2D acceleration information to system table report on graphics test runs
- pts-core: Support for showing test notes on multi-way comparisons
- pts-core: Fix compatibility with the new pts_Graph renderer back-end for result-file-to-pdf option
- pts-core: Add p7zip as a possible external dependency
- pts-core: When running OpenCL tests, report the number of available compute cores
- pts_Graph: Begin work on PHP 5.4 "webui" option (currently far from incomplete/experimental)
- pts_Graph: Tweak spacing on pts_Table
- pts_Graph: Re-factor most text vertical offsets to not use dominant-baseline since Opera still doesn't support this SVG attribute properly
- pts_Graph: Begin unifying the Phoronix Test Suite and OpenBenchmarking.org theme
- pts_Graph: Fix for emitted GD poly-lines being always black
- pts_Graph: Begin work on block diagram graph (currently incomplete/experimental)
- phodevi: Remove support for the deprecated HAL Linux fall-backs
- phodevi: LLVM compiler reporting build configuration enhancements
- phodevi: Support for reporting multiple mmcblk* disk devices
- phodevi: Report /sys/hypervisor/type as a system layer
- phodevi: Fix LXDE version detection
- phodevi: Support for reporting the Openbox version
- phodevi: Read Nouveau clock current frequencies rather than maximum frequencies (performance_level)
- phodevi: Initial implementation of the Phodevi VFS (Virtual File-System; Still A Work In Progress)
- graphics_event_checker: Override NVIDIA SyncToVBlank so it's always disabled
- system_monitor: Allow performance per Watt to be automatically calculated if PERFORMANCE_PER_WATT is set
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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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