A Survey Paper on Processor Workloads

Processors are ubiquitous in today's world. Almost any electronic device contains a processor, and their computing power ranges from a few thousand to millions of instruction per second. Processors are built for many different purposes, and so their capabilities vary greatly. Even within a specific area, processors are different enough to make it difficult to compare them. Benchmarks have been developed to measure performance of processors and rank them among their peers. Much research has been conducted to design and develop benchmarks capable of reflecting a processor's performance. This paper surveys benchmarks in five major processor families: general purpose processors, graphics processors, network processors, embedded processors, and processors in supercomputers. This paper also covers some basics about benchmarks.