Synthetically generated performance test loads for operating systems
Brian W. Kernighan, P. A. Hamilton · 1973
This paper describes the design of and experience with an automated benchmark-generation facility for system testing and performance evaluation. The basic approach involves two components. The first is a simple, highly parameterized “synthetic job”, that is, a program which uses precisely specified amounts of computing resources, but which does no “useful” work. Any particular set of resource utilization parameters for the synthetic job specifies an executable program of known characteristics, which can be used to model the behavior of some real or idealized program.The second component is a generator program, which converts a specification of a job stream into a complete, ready-to-run set of synthetic jobs, which are then used to exercise the system.