The problem-based benchmark suite (PBBS), V2

ABSTRACTThe Problem-Based Benchmark Suite (PBBS) is a set of benchmark problems designed for comparing algorithms, implementations and platforms. For each problem, the suite defines the problem in terms of the input-output relationship, and supplies a set of input instances along with input generators, a default implementation, code for checking correctness or accuracy, and a timing harness. The suite makes it possible to compare different algorithms, platforms (e.g. GPU vs CPU), and implementations using different programming languages or libraries. The purpose is to better understand how well a wide variety of problems parallelize, and what techniques/algorithms are most effective. The suite was first announced in 2012 with 14 benchmark problems. Here we describe some significant updates. In particular, we have added nine new benchmarks from a mix of problems in text processing, computational geometry and machine learning. We have further optimized the default implementations; several are the fastest available for multi-core CPUs, often achieving near perfect speedup on the 72 core machine we test them on. The suite now also supplies significantly larger default test instances, as well as a broader variety, with many derived from real-world data.