The NAS parallel benchmarks summary and preliminary results

A new set of benchmarks has been developed for the performance evaluation of highly parallel supercomputers. These benchmarks consist of five "parallel kernel" benchmarks and three "simulated application" benchmarks. Together they mimic the computation and data movement characteristics of large scale computational fluid dynamics applications. The principal distinguishing feature of these benchmarks is their "pencil and paper" specification-all details of these benchmarks are specified only algorithmically. In this way many of the difficulties associated with conventional benchmarking approaches on highly parallel systems are avoided.