Whetstone (benchmark)

The Whetstone benchmark is a synthetic benchmark for evaluating the performance of computers. It was first written in Algol 60 in 1972 at TSU (The Technical Support Unit of the Department of Trade and Industry - later part of the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency or CCTA in the United Kingdom). It was derived from statistics on program behaviour gathered on the KDF9 computer at NPL National Physical Laboratory in the United Kingdom, using a modified version of its Whetstone ALGOL 60 compiler. The workload on the machine was represented as a set of frequencies of execution of the 124 instructions of the Whetstone Code. The Whetstone Compiler was built at the Atomic Power Division of the English Electric Company in Whetstone, Leicestershire, England, hence its name. Dr. B.A. Wichman at NPL produced a set of 42 simple ALGOL 60 statements, which in a suitable combination matched the execution statistics.