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Month: December 2012

The newest member of the family

In his blog post TouchXPRT Web test update, Bill mentioned that we would be releasing Web-based workloads for the community to try out. Although we developed them as part of TouchXPRT, the cross-platform nature of these tests suggested to us that they should stand on their own.

After seeking community input, we have decided to make them a separate benchmark. So, we are proud to announce WebXPRT. The first community preview will be available mid-next week. WebXPRT CP1 contains four workloads: Photo Effects, Face Detect, Stocks Dashboard, and Offline Notes. Because the workloads are all HMTL5 based, they run on a wide variety of devices and operating systems—from iPad tablets to Android phones to Windows computers.

As with all community previews, we are very interested in your opinion. Tell us what you like or don’t like about the workloads. Are there other use cases you’d like to see?

Now that we have three benchmarks, the old HDXPRT-centric model of the community needs updating. Earlier this week, a message went out to the community announcing that we will be reorganizing the benchmarks under the umbrella of BenchmarkXPRT. This reorganization will touch all aspects of the community, from the Web site to Facebook, Twitter, and even the memberships themselves. We’ll be rolling out these changes over the next few weeks, and we’ll keep you informed every step of the way.

Eric

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There is such a thing as too much

There’s been a lot of excitement about TouchXPRT recently. However, we haven’t been ignoring HDXPRT. On November 9, we released a patch that lets HDXPRT support Windows 8. We’ve now integrated the patch into HDXPRT2012, so all copies of HDXPRT 2012 going forward will install on Windows 8 without the need for a separate step.

As promised, we will be releasing the source code for HDXPRT 2012. We anticipate having it available for community members by December 14.

During the comment period for HDXPRT, this message came through loud and clear: HDXPRT 2012 is too big and takes too long to run. So we are working hard to find the best way to reduce the number of applications and scenarios. While we want to make the benchmark smaller and faster, we want to make sure that HDXPRT 2013 is comprehensive enough to provide useful performance metrics for the greatest number of people.

We’re working toward having an RFC in late January that will define a leaner, meaner HDXPRT 2013, and will reflect the other comments we have as received as well.  If you have thoughts about which applications and scenarios are most important to you, please let us know.

In other news, CES is coming in January, and Principled Technologies will be there! Once again, Bill is hoping to meet with as many of you in the Development Community as possible. We’ll have a suite at the Hilton and would love for you to come, kick back, and talk about HDXPRT, TouchXPRT, the future of benchmarks, or about the cool things you’ve seen at the show. (Bill loves talking about gadgets. Last year, he went into gadget overload!)

If you plan to be at CES, but are stuck working a booth or suite, let us know and Bill will try to stop by and say hi. Drop us an email at hdxrpt_CES@principledtechnologies.com and we will set up an appointment.

Finally, we’re really excited about the big changes at the Principled Technologies Web site. The new Web site gives us a lot of opportunities. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be looking at ways the Development Community can take advantage of them.

Eric

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