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Technical Perspective: For Better or Worse, Benchmarks Shape a Field

By David Patterson
Communications of the ACM, July 2012, Vol. 55 No. 7, Page 104
10.1145/2209249.2209271
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Like other IT fields, computer architects initially reported incomparable results. We quickly saw the folly of this approach. We then went through a sequence of performance metrics. When a field has good benchmarks, we settle debates and the field makes rapid progress.

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