[bench-mahrk] 
| 1. | a standard of excellence, achievement, etc., against which similar things must be measured or judged: The new hotel is a benchmark in opulence and comfort. |
| 2. | any standard or reference by which others can be measured or judged: The current price for crude oil may become the benchmark. |
| 3. | Computers. an established point of reference against which computers or programs can be measured in tests comparing their performance, reliability, etc. |
| 4. | of, pertaining to, or resulting in a benchmark: benchmark test, benchmark study. |
| bench·mark (běnch'märk') n.
To measure (a rival's product) according to specified standards in order to compare it with and improve one's own product. [From the use of the mark as a place to insert an angle iron that serves as a support for a leveling rod.] |
Benchmark
A standard against which the performance of a security, index, or investor can be measured.
Investopedia Commentary
Most equity mutual funds and portfolio managers use the S&P 500 index as the benchmark to beat.
When evaluating performance of any investment, it's important to compare against the right benchmark. For example, comparing a bond fund to the Russell 2000 (which is an index of small-caps), is not meaningful.
Related Links
Index Investing Tutorial
A Market By Any Other Name
Indexes: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
See also: Benchmark Bond, DJIA, Index, Index Fund, Index Hugger, Passive Management, Russell 2000, S&P 500, Wilshire 5000 Index
benchmark
benchmark benchmark
A standard program or set of programs which can be run on different computers to give an inaccurate measure of their performance.
"In the computer industry, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and benchmarks."
A benchmark may attempt to indicate the overall power of a system by including a "typical" mixture of programs or it may attempt to measure more specific aspects of performance, like graphics, I/O or computation (integer or floating-point). Others measure specific tasks like rendering polygons, reading and writing files or performing operations on matrices. The most useful kind of benchmark is one which is tailored to a user's own typical tasks. While no one benchmark can fully characterise overall system performance, the results of a variety of realistic benchmarks can give valuable insight into expected real performance.
Benchmarks should be carefully interpreted, you should know exactly which benchmark was run (name, version); exactly what configuration was it run on (CPU, memory, compiler options, single user/multi-user, peripherals, network); how does the benchmark relate to your workload?
Well-known benchmarks include Whetstone, Dhrystone, Rhealstone (see h), the Gabriel benchmarks for Lisp, the SPECmark suite, and LINPACK.
See also machoflops, MIPS, smoke and mirrors.
Usenet newsgroup: comp.benchmarks.
Tennessee BenchWeb.
[The Jargon File]
(2002-03-26)
