Why the Weighted Geometric Mean?
The SPECopc subcommittee that recommended a method for determining composite numbers started with the description for assigning weights that is provided to each creator of a viewset: “Assign a weight to each path based on the percentage of time in each path…” Given this description, the weighted geometric mean of each viewset is the correct composite metric. This composite metric is a derived quantity that is exactly as if you ran the viewset tests for 100 seconds, where test 1 was run for 100 × weight1 seconds, test 2 for 100 × weight2 seconds, and so on. The end result would be the number of frames rendered/total time which will equal frames/second. It also has the desirable property of “bigger is better”; that is, the higher the number, the better the performance. Why Not Weighted Harmonic Mean? Since the results of SPECviewperf are expressed as “frames/second,” the subcommittee was asked why we did not choose the weighted harmonic mean. The weighted harmonic mean would have been
