Benchmarking in Embedded Systems

Benchmarking as the definition meant is evaluating the product in hand by comparing with a standard. In embedded industry, Benchmarking helps companies claim their specifications and compare their performance with competitors. For example, consider the benchmarking tool ike Antutu which ranks your smartphone based on the performance. When we say performance here, we are talking about the processor load, memory usage, analyzing graphics capabilities. When a product is to be released or released in the market, the actual vendor or the third party vendors do analyze the performance using these benchmarking tools. In the mobile industry, analyzing the performance of processor, graphics performance, display performance, camera performance, audio performance and battery performance is very important to judge the overall performance of the mobile. Some of the benchmarking tools used in the industry are,

• Antutu 
• PassMark software - CPU performance with CPU Mark, Memory usage with Disk Mark
• UKL benchmark
• GFXBench
• GeekBench
• Cinebench
• SuperPI
• Sunspider
• Speedometer

While some are licensed softwares, some are freely available under the OpenGL license. Coming to the case of testing the performance of microcontrollers, there are tools as below. 

• ULPBench developed by Embedded microprocessor benchmarking consortium- to calculate the energy performance (power consumption) 
• CoreMark also developed by Embedded microprocessor benchmarking consortium
• Dhrystone benchmarking