June 27, 1995
A new computer benchmark developed by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Ames Laboratory at Iowa State University (ISU) has received a 1995 R&D 100 Award.
Editors at Research & Development (R&D) magazine announced this week that they had selected the HINT or Hierarchical INTegration benchmark for the award, which is presented to the 100 most significant new technologies introduced into the world market each year.
HINT was developed by John Gustafson, an Ames Laboratory computational scientist and an ISU adjunct professor of computer science, and Quinn Snell, an Ames Lab research assistant. The HINT benchmark cuts through different computer languages, precisions, speeds, and architectures to provide a more accurate measure of a computer's full range of performance.
In the past, consumers have had to rely solely on misleading specifications like the megahertz rating to measure computing power, says Gustafson. HINT uses a work measure called QUIPS, Quality Improvement Per Second, also developed by Gustafson, to measure the amount of work a computer can perform over time, a more absolute measurement of total computer performance. Because HINT can be ported to a variety of computer architectures it has applications in all types of computers, ranging from personal computers to sophisticated supercomputers.
This year's award marks the third time Gustafson has been recognized by R&D. In 1989 he received an R&D 100 Award for demonstrating parallel processing in a practical problem. He received his second award in 1991 for developing the SLALOM benchmark, a precursor to HINT.
In receiving this year's award, Gustafson said, "I value my R&D 100 Awards above any other. The competition is extremely tough and the judges are very selective about who receives the award, so it really is a stamp of approval by some pretty smart people."
Gustafson and the other winners will receive the award at a special ceremony in Chicago in September.
Ames Laboratory is operated by ISU for the DOE. The Laboratory conducts research into various areas of national concern, including energy resources, high performance computing, environmental cleanup and restoration and the synthesis and study of new materials.
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The URL for this document is http://www.scl.ameslab.gov
Revised July 16, 2002