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The NAS Parallel Benchmarks (NPB) are a small set of programs designed to help evaluate the performance of parallel supercomputers. The benchmarks, which are derived from computational fluid dynamics (CFD) applications, consist of five kernels and three pseudo-applications. The NPB come in several "flavors." NAS solicits performance results for each from all sources.
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NAS PARALLEL BENCHMARKS
These are the original "pencil and paper" benchmarks. Vendors and others implement the detailed specifications in the NPB 1 report, using algorithms and programming models appropriate to their different machines. Submitted results are verified by the NAS Division. NPB 1 implementations are generally proprietary.
Specification: NAS Parallel Benchmarks, RNR-94-007 (PDF-425KB)
Source Code:
+ Get Download Instructions
Results:
How To Submit Results:
NAS solicits NPB 1 results from all sources, but especially from computer vendors. These results are compiled in tabular fashion in periodic reports that will appear on this web page. Send results to npb@nas.nasa.gov. Details on what information to include are contained in section 1.4 of the NPB 1 specification.
NPB 2
These are MPI-based source-code implementations written and distributed by NAS. They are intended to be run with little or no tuning, and approximate the performance a typical user can expect to obtain for a portable parallel program. They supplement, rather than replace, NPB 1. For the convenience of developers of parallelization tools a serial version derived from the MPI implementations is also made available (version 2.3, and also in version 3.0). The latest release, NPB 2.4, contains a new problem class (D), as well as a version of the BT (Block Tri-diagonal) benchmark that does significant (parallel) I/O. Each Class D benchmark involves approximately 20 times as much work, and a data set that is approximately 16 times as large, respectively, as the corresponding Class C benchmark. The Class D implementation of the IS benchmark is not available.
Reports on specifications and reference implementations:
Source Code:
+ Get Download Instructions
Results:
The results presented here are partly generated by NAS, and partly by computer vendors and the HPC community. NAS is currently working on creating a more automatic archiving facility, as well as a tool for creating performance plots on the fly.
How To Submit Results:
NAS solicits NPB 2 results from all sources. They will be incorporated into a database maintained by NAS, and will also be made available on this web page. Send results to npb@nas.nasa.gov. Details on what information should be submitted are contained in appendix D of the NPB 2 report. This information includes:
- Output generated by the benchmarks (includes timing information).
- All files that were changed (including Makefiles).
- Detailed information about the hardware and software on which the benchmark was run, and contact information for the submitter. Submitters should make every attempt to provide enough information so that their experiment(s) can be repeated by others.
Changes: NPB 2 Code Changes
NPB 3
These are parallel implementations using OpenMP, High Performance Fortran (HPF), and Java, respectively. They were derived from the NPB-serial implementations released with NPB 2.3, after some additional optimization. These implementations, which include the improved serial codes, were previously known collectively as the Programming Baseline for the NAS Parallel Benchmarks (PBN).
A set of multi-zone benchmarks based on the single-zone NPB 3 has been added. The implementations include both serial and parallel versions. They are meant for testing the effectiveness of multi-level and hybrid parallelization paradigms and tools. The parallel implementation uses hybrid parallelism: MPI for the coarse-grain parallelism, and OpenMP for the loop-level parallelism.
Reports on specifications and implementations:
Source Code:
+ Get Download Instructions
How To Submit Results:
NAS solicits NPB 3 results from all sources. They will be incorporated into a database maintained by NAS, and will also be made available on this web page. Send results to npb@nas.nasa.gov. Details on what information should be submitted are contained in appendix D of the NPB 2 report. This information includes:
- Output generated by the benchmarks (includes timing information).
- All files that were changed (including Makefiles).
- Detailed information about the hardware and software on which the benchmark was run, and contact information for the submitter. Submitters should make every attempt to provide enough information so that their experiment(s) can be repeated by others.
Changes: + NPB 3 Code Changes
GridNPB 3
These are a new suite of benchmarks, designed specifically to rate the performance of computational grids. Each of the four benchmarks consists of a collection of communicating tasks derived from the NPB. They symbolize distributed applications typically run on grids. The distribution contains serial and concurrent reference implementations in Fortran and Java, including a version that uses Globus as grid middleware. A variation of the grid benchmarks called "Rapid Fire" is included. It tests grids' capabilities to manage and execute distributed applications featuring large numbers of relatively short-lived processes.
Reports on specifications and implementations:
GridNPB 3.0, NAS-02-005 (PDF-352KB)
Source Code: + Download Instructions
How To Submit Results:
Objective measures for grid performance are not yet available; NAS currently does not collect GridNPB performance results. A valid implementation should always report turnaround time and, preferably, resources used, including libraries, schedulers, resource brokers, and so forth. Efforts are under way under the auspices of the Global Grid Forum to define uniform grid resource usage reports. Once this work has been completed, this will be the recommended format for usage reports.
Changes: + GridNPB 3 Code Changes
Information on Other NPB Implmentations
To get information on third-party High Performance Fortran implementations and OpenMP C implementations of the NAS Parallel Benchmarks, use the following search terms on Google.
NPB OpenMP C
NPB High Performance Fortran
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Contact Information
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