Transaction Processing Performance Council launches benchmark standard for IoT gateway systems

The Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) announced Friday immediate availability of TPCx-IoT, an initial benchmark which enables direct comparison of different software and hardware solutions for IoT gateways. TPCx-IoT has been designed to provide verifiable performance, price-performance and availability metrics for commercially available systems that typically ingest massive amounts of data from large numbers of devices.

Despite the proliferation of IoT devices, until now, there have been no standard metrics available which enable direct comparison of different software and hardware platforms across IoT environments. This has led to substantial challenges when trying to compare various IoT system topologies and implementation methodologies. TPCx-IoT enables such comparisons in a technically rigorous, directly comparable and vendor-neutral manner.

The TPC is a non-profit corporation founded to define transaction processing and database benchmarks and to disseminate objective, verifiable TPC performance data to the industry. The TPC currently has 21 full members: Actian, Cisco, Dell, DataCore Software, Fujitsu, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Hitachi, Huawei, IBM, Inspur, Intel, Lenovo, Microsoft, Nutanix, Oracle, Pivotal, Red Hat, SAP, Teradata, TTA and VMware; and three associate members: China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), Ideas International, and the University of Coimbra.

Positioned between edge architecture and the back-end data center, gateway systems perform functions such as data aggregation, real-time analytics and persistent storage.

TPC benchmarks model the basic types of operations that a typical transaction processing system might use, and thus have a range of applicability to customer’s environments. In addition, TPC benchmarks are designed to put systems under maximum stress.

An analogy can be drawn between computer and software companies and car companies here. Companies participate in TPC benchmarking for the same reasons car companies participate in Formula 1 racing. Many of the new components and technologies applied to producing the fastest Formula 1 car are incorporated into consumer car design. Over and over again TPC members have reported that this TPC testing process has enabled them to produce more robust, higher performing products.

“The IoT revolution is transforming virtually every major market segment,” said Raghunath Nambiar, chairman of the TPCx-IoT benchmark committee and CTO for Cisco UCS. “TPCx-IoT is the first major step in enabling fair comparisons of performance and price-performance of hardware and software systems dealing with IoT, demonstrating the commitment of the TPC to come up with standards relevant to the industry and academia.”

The workload is representative of activities typical in IoT gateway systems, and models continuous system availability of 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, running on commercially available hardware and software platforms. The specification and kit are available for download through the TPC’s web site.

“Crafting this benchmark was the result of a sustained, collaborative effort between the world’s leading enterprise firms and researchers under the umbrella of the TPC” continued Nambiar. “We’re thrilled that the benchmark is now publicly available, and encourage anyone who is interested to download it, run it, and provide feedback.”

Organizations interested in contributing to the TPC’s benchmark development process are also encouraged to become members.


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