A decade after its founding, and despite the challenges of its mission to establish industry-standard benchmarks for the diverse world of embedded processors, the Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium (EEMBC) is enjoying a period of thriving growth and increasing technical sophistication as it celebrates its 10th anniversary.
EEMBC began as a “hands-on” project conducted by Markus 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, LSI Logic, MIPS, Motorola (now Freescale), NEC, Philips (now NXP), QED (now PMC Sierra), SGS Thomson (now ST Micro), Siemens (now Infineon), Sun, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba.
Today, EEMBC counts 70 processor, tool, and system vendors among its commercial members and licensees. Additionally, the consortium contributes to fundamental research in the embedded processor field by licensing its software to qualified college and university faculty members at a substantial discount.
"When Markus first presented us with the EEMBC idea, we all agreed that benchmarking embedded microprocessors according to objective criteria was a worthy endeavor," said Ahmad Zandi, currently CTO and VP of engineering at Solidware Technologies, who attended EEMBC’s founding meeting in 1997 as a representative of Sun Microsystems. "To see how far EEMBC has come in its first 10 years is a testimony to the vision of Markus Levy and the perseverance of EEMBC’s members."
The first certified EEMBC benchmark scores were published in April 2000. To date, the consortium has published more than 350 score reports and is now working on the second- and third-generation versions of its application-focused benchmark software.
"We recognized long ago the need for what EEMBC is doing, while realizing that it might take many years for the organization to attain a solid foothold as an industry standard," said Geoff Lees, general manager of the Microcontroller product line at NXP Semiconductors, a member of EEMBC since July 1997. "It is gratifying to have reached the point where we can use the EEMBC benchmarks in a way that clearly benefits our customers and the entire industry, and to be an active participant in the development of new EEMBC benchmarks that will support more complex processor architectures."
Lees was among the speakers at a recent EEMBC Board of Directors meeting during which long-time participants in the consortium offered their perspectives on the consortium’s accomplishments and contributions to the embedded industry. Additional presenters included Alan Anderson of Analog Devices, Sergei Larin of Freescale Semiconductor, John Hogan of MIPS, Roger Shepherd of STMicroelectronics, and William Bryant of Sun Microsystems.
"EEMBC has evolved for us from just another benchmark suite to a prerequisite for virtually every new product introduction campaign," said Larin, a senior applications engineer at Freescale and chair of EEMBC’s Consumer Subcommittee. "EEMBC maintains its relevance by offering realistic and practical tests, by allowing optimization to be performed in a controlled environment, and by insisting on certification as a condition of publishing scores. This is why EEMBC enjoys support from so many major industry players."
"In 1997, most processors were general-purpose microcontrollers or microprocessors," said EEMBC President Markus Levy. "Today, the industry has shifted to SoCs and other types of application-specific devices. This means that EEMBC must test more than just the processor core, and our purview must expand to testing memory architectures and integrated peripherals. We are working towards a more system-level approach with new multicore, automotive, office automation, and storage benchmarks. I am confident that EEMBC will continue to support the embedded industry well with standards that point the way to improvements from which all of us can benefit."
