Celebrating 15th Anniversary, EEMBC Benchmarks See Growing Popularity and Expanded Mission

EL DORADO HILLS, CA--(Marketwire - Jul 9, 2012) - As it celebrates the 15^th anniversary of its founding, the Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium (EEMBC) is enjoying significant gains in popularity among embedded system designers, as well as an expansion in the breadth of the industry-standard benchmarks it is developing for the diverse world of embedded processors and systems.

Originally launched to provide comparable and objective performance data on general-purpose embedded microprocessors, EEMBC has since broadened the scope of its mission to include the benchmarking of highly integrated SoCs capable of tackling both specific and general-purpose tasks, as well as the performance of smartphones and tablet PCs and next-generation firewall appliances performing deep packet inspection (DPI).

"As embedded microprocessors have evolved from relatively simple devices to the complex SoCs we see today, the whole concept of benchmarking has changed as well, going beyond speed measurements while performing abstract computing functions to include energy consumption and aspects of performance that are much closer to the user experience," said Markus Levy, EEMBC president. "It is a tribute to the dedication of our members that EEMBC has continued to thrive in the presence of this rapidly changing industry."

Today EEMBC counts 130 processor, tools, and systems vendors among its commercial members and licensees. Additionally, the consortium contributes to advanced research in the embedded processor field by licensing its benchmark suites to more than 100 universities worldwide.

The best known of EEMBC's processor benchmarks is CoreMark, a freely licensed benchmark that has been downloaded by almost 8,000 users to analyze and compare processor core performance. Recently developed EEMBC benchmarks also include MultiBench, a comprehensive tool for evaluating multicore processor performance, and AndEBench and BrowsingBench, benchmark suites that directly analyze the performance of a smartphone or tablet, and indirectly measure the performance of the internal SoC as well as the system software stack.

"EEMBC has done a remarkable job of staying abreast of the key developments in the embedded market segment and remaining highly relevant to key stakeholders," said Phil Ames, operations director, Automotive Solutions Division at Intel. "The integrity and rigor of its benchmarks have made EEMBC one of those rare organizations that really does have the impact of raising standards across an entire industry."

EEMBC began as a "hands-on" project conducted by Levy at EDN Magazine in early 1996 and held its founding meeting in Boston in 1997. Its charter members included Analog Devices, ARM, Hitachi (now Renesas), IBM, Intel, LSI Logic, MIPS, Motorola (now Freescale), NEC (also now Renesas), Philips (now NXP), QED (now PMC Sierra), SGS Thomson (now ST Micro), Siemens (now Infineon), Sun Microsystems, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba.

"Over the past 15 years, EEMBC benchmark scores have come a long way from an experiment in performance measurement to becoming a real industry standard that customers are very likely to request when considering various embedded processor options," said Nikolay Guenov, head of marketing for Freescale's Networking Processor Division. "We are pleased to have been part of this effort from the beginning and applaud EEMBC's continued success."

"First and foremost, I'd like to thank all the EEMBC members, who continue to believe in the EEMBC process of creating industry-standard benchmarks," said Levy. "There's no doubt that with the support of these members and Shay Gal-On, our director of technology, EEMBC will continue to meet the needs of the industry as we expand our benchmark development efforts in the various embedded market segments."

About EEMBC
EEMBC, the Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium, develops industry-standard benchmarks to test embedded processors and systems such as smart phones and tablet PCs. EEMBC's benchmark development work is supported by yearly member dues and license fees. Further information is available at www.eembc.org.

EEMBC, CoreMark, and BrowsingBench are registered trademarks of the Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium. All other trademarks appearing herein are the property of their respective owners.

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