It was derived from statistics on program behaviour gathered on the KDF9 computer at NPL National Physical Laboratory, using a modified version of its Whetstone ALGOL 60 compiler.
[4] The benchmark employs 8 test procedures, with three executing standard floating point calculations, two with such as COS or EXP functions, one each for integer arithmetic, branching or memory assignments.
One necessary change was to maintain measurement accuracy at increasing CPU speeds, with self calibration to run for a noticeable finite time, typically set for 10 seconds or 100 for early PCs with low timer resolution.
In conjunction with the undertaking controlled by the Contracts Division, CCTA engineers had responsibility to design and supervise acceptance trials [5] of all UK Government computers and those for centrally funded for Universities and Research Councils, with systems varying from minicomputers to supercomputers.
[12] Details of the Vector Whetstone Benchmark performance were also repeated, by Roy Longbottom, at the June 1990 Advanced Computing Seminar at Natural Environment Research Council Wallingford.
On achieving 1 MWIPS, the Digital Equipment Corporation VAX-11/780 minicomputer became accepted as the first commercially available 32-bit computer to demonstrate 1 MIPS (Millions of Instructions Per Second), CERN ,[14] not really appropriate for a benchmark dependent on floating point speed.
This had an impact on the Dhrystone Benchmark, the second accepted general purpose computer performance measurement program, with no floating point calculations.
By then, PC processor operating clock speeds reached 4000 MHz and did not increase that much by the 2020s, reducing the need to gather results of the original scalar benchmark.
In 2017 “Whetstone Benchmark History and Results” [16] was published for public access, with identified year of first delivery and purchase prices were added, also doubling the number of computers covered in the CCTA report.
[18] During this period, versions of the Whetstone Benchmark were produced to access Multithreading (computer architecture), initially for PCs running under Microsoft Windows, the latest supporting up to 8 CPUs or CPU cores particularly for those known as 4 core/8 thread varieties.
The History report includes new sections for PC results, with CPUs from 1979, particularly those produced by up to 12 different compilers or interpreters, covering C/C++ ( up to 64 bit SSE level), Old Fortran, Basic and Java.
Later scalar, vector and multithreading results were included in a 2022 report “Cray 1 Supercomputer Performance Comparisons With Home Computers Phones and Tablets” .
[20] This included the following, originally in a report on the first Raspberry Pi computer: "In 1978, the Cray 1 supercomputer cost $7 Million, weighed 10,500 pounds and had a 115 kilowatt power supply.
The Raspberry Pi costs around $70 (CPU board, case, power supply, SD card), weighs a few ounces, uses a 5 watt power supply and is more than 4.5 times faster than the Cray 1" This claim was based on the official average performance of the Livermore Loops Benchmark that was used to demonstrate that the first Cray 1 met the required contractual requirements.
Whetstone Benchmark source codes, compiled programs and reports including results are currently (at the time of writing) on Roy Longbottom’s website roylongbottom.org.uk, but this has a limited lifetime.
The original website provides the same indexing format but includes the links to access both local files and those at ResearchGate, the former having options to download program codes.
If the file name is known, available captures can be found, such as for benchnt.zip (copy and modify link address),[24] The Whetstone benchmark primarily measures the floating-point arithmetic performance.