SPEC Updates SERT Suite for ISO-Compliant Server Energy Efficiency Benchmarking

The Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation's SPEC SERT Suite has evolved as the industry-standard for measuring the energy efficiency of servers over the last decade. Regulatory authorities such as the U.S EPA and Japan's METI are some of the many who have adopted the suite to determine thresholds for various energy-efficiency programs.

In August 2020, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published the ISO/IEC 21836:2020 standard to specify the measurement methodology for assessment and reporting of a server's energy efficiency. Today, SPEC is announcing SERT Suite 2.0.4, an update to enable its incorporation into the ISO standard. It must be noted that the SERT suite was already compliant with ISO 21836. The new version also brings in ISO compliance report links. In addition to including latest PTDaemon software (v1.9.2) that interfaces with SPEC-approved power analyzers and temperature sensors, and GUI optimizations, the SPEC SERT Suite 2.0.4 also supports servers based on the latest ARM processors from Ampere, Fujitsu, and Marvell.

The SERT 2.0.4 suite is priced at USD 2800, and is available for immediate download. Being a minor version update, it is free for SERT 2 licensees to upgrade. Similar to all other benchmarks developed by SPEC, the SERT Suite from the SPECpower Committee has been developed in a vendor-agnostic manner with representatives from across the industry. Needless to say, this greatly increases the credibility of the benchmark. The SERT Suite allows consumers / cloud service providers to determine the energy efficiency (and, the TCO indirectly) of a particular offering for their workloads. The latest offering keeps up with the evolving industry requirements.