Mac OS X adaptor code for SPECviewperf® 8.1 review
DownloadWith this piece of software - available in source code - you can run the SPECviewperf benchmark on Mac OS X.
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With this piece of software - available in source code - you can run the SPECviewperf benchmark on Mac OS X.
SPECviewperf is the most renowned benchmark test for characterizing the OpenGL performance of computer systems. Viewperf tries to simulate "real-world" applications and uses large datasets from professional CAD and computer animation software to perform the tests.
SPECviewperf can be downloaded from the official distribution web-site. After combining it with our adaptor code, you can create your own version of the software, compatible with Mac OS X.
With the advent of Mac OS X, the Apple Macintosh has become a powerful platform to run tried and tested Unix software. This includes large-scale applications for CAD, engineering, computer animation, and scientific visualization that have been or will be ported to the Mac OS X platform.
A very important factor in this development is OpenGL, the industry standard Application Program Interface (API) for creating interactive real-time computer graphics. This document describes how to run SPECviewperf, the most renowned benchmark test for characterizing the performance of OpenGL implementations (hardware and software) on Mac OS X systems.
While Mac OS X fully supports OpenGL and the official Unix source code for SPECviewperf can be downloaded from the SPEC organization, it was not easy until now to run SPECviewperf on Apple's new operating system: The ViewPerf code does not (yet) consider Apple Macintosh as supported platform to run the benchmark test.
As an additional problem, Mac OS X has one of the richest OpenGL interfaces of the industry because it is able to support four different OpenGL client extensions:
• the AGL extensions, the legacy Apple interface used in old-style Carbon applications,
• GLX, the OpenGL extensions for the X Window system, used in X11 applications that run on Mac OS X,
• the OpenGL Framework, the native interface to the operating system's GL support, used in up-to-date Mac OS X applications,
• Core OpenGL, the common low-level interface which is the basis for the previously mentioned APIs.
We have developed adaptor code and a patch for SPECviewperf that enables you to run the ViewPerf benchmarks natively on Mac OS X via the Quartz / Aqua window server. With this piece of software, ViewPerf is able to use the Mac's original OpenGL engine and will correctly identify Macintosh hardware. You will be able to run the standard ViewPerf benchmark tests on Mac OS X and characterize the performance of its OpenGL implementation in comparison with other computer and operating systems.
Additionally, we provide some scripts that enable you to build and run the ViewPerf benchmark tests with simple point-and-click operations. So the whole process should be managable even for users that have never been working with the command-line before. Detailed explanations of all steps are given below.
The general procedure is as follows:
1. Download the original SPECviewperf source code and datasets from the SPEC web-site.
2. Download the Mac OS X adaptor code from our web-site.
3. Build the ViewPerf benchmark tools.
4. Run the SPECviewperf benchmark tests.
What's New:
Revised version for ViewPerf 8.1, Mac OS X 10.4.2 "Tiger", and Macintosh systems with PPC or x86 processors.
Requirements:
To build the software and run the benchmark tests, you'll need at least 1.3 GBytes of free disk space. The following environment should be installed on your Mac:
Mac OS X 10.4.2 Tiger or a later version
Mac OS X Xcode 2 developer tools
You can run the test on a PowerPC-based or Intel-based Macintosh system without any modifications.
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