June 13, 2008 -- The Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium (EEMBC) has announced publication of the first certified benchmark scores obtained using OABench 2.0, EEMBC's next-generation benchmark tests that approximate the performance of embedded microprocessors in printers, plotters, and other systems that handle text and image processing tasks.

IBM's 1-GHz PowerPC 750CL is the industry's first processor to be benchmarked with OABench 2.0 in tests that included a simultaneous measurement of the energy/power "cost" of the processor's performance using the EEMBC EnergyBench tool. The combination of tests yields data on performance as well as indicating how much energy is required to run the performance benchmarks.

The Green Hills Software MULTI 4.2.3 compiler was used for all of the tests, which were performed in an out-of-the-box environment on production silicon.

The OABench 2.0 suite consists of five benchmarks, each with its own datasets, including entirely new Bezier and Ghostscript tests. The new Bezier benchmark interpolates a set of points defined by the four points of a Bezier curve and stresses the ability of embedded microprocessors to perform division, multiplication, and scalar processing tasks. The new Ghostscript benchmark provides an indication of the potential performance of an embedded processor running a PostScript printer engine. Performance is measured using nine input files reflecting different aspects of PostScript language processing, as well as six output drivers reflecting the different types of processing found in common printer engines. The Ghostscript tests are measured using resolutions of 72dpi and 600dpi to help demonstrate the relative performance and energy values for a range of printer price points.

In addition to these new benchmarks, OABench 2.0 introduces enhanced dithering, image rotation, and text parsing benchmarks with new datasets; a cyclical redundancy checksum (CRC) feature for self-checking; and the ability to view processed output files. The complete score report for the IBM PowerPC 750 CL consists of 87 separate benchmark scores in the five overall categories of Bezier, Dither, Rotate, Text, and Ghostscript.

"The Ghostscript tests in this new suite are among our most challenging from a computational and memory bandwidth point of view," said EEMBC President Markus Levy. "The combination of OABench 2.0 with EnergyBench is also quite revealing. In this case the tests show that energy consumption can vary by as much as 15 percent depending on the workload being processed. We're grateful to IBM for being the first to publish certified scores using OABench 2.0 and thus make available to the whole embedded industry the first example of the insights that this benchmark suite will enable."

Part of IBM's Power Architecture technology line of embedded processors, the IBM PowerPC 750CL RISC microprocessor is a 32-bit implementation of the IBM PowerPC family and operates at speeds from 400MHz to 1GHz. The 750CL includes a 256kByte L2 cache and is targeted at networking, storage, imaging, consumer electronics, and other high-performance embedded applications.

Complete details of the EEMBC OABench 2.0 and EnergyBench scores for the 1-GHz IBM PowerPC 750CL are available for free at the EEMBC website.