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Performance
Ultrafast clock speeds and a highly parallel 64-bit architecture make the PowerPC G5
ideal for next-generation multimedia, graphics, and scientific applications. Integer and
floating-point math calculations are faster than ever thanks to 64-bit-wide registers
and data paths.
To demonstrate the performance advantages of this groundbreaking new processor,
Apple put the dual 2GHz Power Mac G5 to the test against the top-of-the-line Pentium
4– and Xeon-based systems, the 3GHz Dell Dimension 8300 and the dual 3.06GHz Dell
Precision 650, respectively.
SPEC CPU2000
The Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) CPU2000 benchmark suite
is the recognized industry standard for assessing processing performance. SPEC is a
nonprofit organization of hardware and software vendors, universities, and consultants.
They developed the SPEC CPU2000 benchmarks based on actual end-user applications.
These tests depend on processor, memory subsystem, and compiler performance when
executing integer and floating-point computations. For more information on the bench-
marks, see www.spec.org.
Apple hired an independent laboratory, VeriTest, to conduct the SPEC CPU2000
benchmark tests and provide documented results. Since SPEC CPU2000 measures the
performance of both the hardware and the compiler, VeriTest normalized the compiler
on both platforms to allow for a direct comparison of hardware performance alone.
VeriTest used GCC—an open source compiler popular with programmers around the
world—with similar settings on all systems. (Even though GCC cannot automatically
generate Velocity Engine code for the PowerPC G5, settings included automatic genera-
tion of optimized SSE/SSE2 code for the Pentium 4 and the Xeon.) The Power Mac G5
used Mac OS X v10.2.7 (G5), and the Intel-based systems used Red Hat Linux 9.0.
The SPEC CPU2000 benchmark suite comprises four metrics—SPECint_base2000,
SPECfp_base2000, SPECint_rate_base2000, and SPECfp_rate_base2000—to represent
different performance characteristics of the system.
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PowerPC G5