WHETSTONE

Whetstone

The Whetstone benchmark is a synthetic benchmark for evaluating the performance of computers. It was first written in Algol 60 in 1972 at the National Physical Laboratory in the United Kingdom and derived from statistics on program behaviour gathered on the KDF9 computer, using a modified version of its Whetstone Algol 60 compiler. The program's behavior replicated that of a typical KDF9 scientific program and was designed to defeat compiler optimizations that would have adversely affected the accuracy of this model. The Whetstone Compiler was built at the Atomic Power Division of the English Electric Company in Whetstone, Leicestershire, England, hence its name.

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whetstone

Noun

  1. A hard stone or piece of synthetically bonded hard minerals that has been formed with at least one flat surface, used to sharpen or hone an edged tool.
  2. A benchmark for evaluating the power of a computer.


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: whetstone
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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