OSNews

"Since the second computer was built, users have compared the performance of different computers. Performance matters. Sometimes, a performance difference is just a question of whether a job will be done sooner or later; in other cases, a performance difference might prevent a job from being done at all. Measuring performance of a particular task is not too daunting, but developing a prediction of how quickly other tasks will run can be nigh impossible. A benchmark is a task designed such that a measure of performance on this particular task will be a good proxy for performance across a wide variety of tasks."