1. One of a number of marks along a line of survey, affixed to permanent objects, to show where leveling staffs were placed.
2. Any standard by which variations or performance may be tested.
1. A standard by which something can be measured or judged
2. A surveyor's mark on a permanent object of predetermined position and elevation used as a reference point; SYN. bench mark. bench mark

A test used to measure hardware or software performance. Benchmarks for hardware use programs that test the capabilities of the equipment—for example, the speed at which a CPU can execute instructions or handle floating-point numbers. Benchmarks for software determine the efficiency, accuracy, or speed of a program in performing a particular task, such as recalculating data in a spreadsheet. The same data is used with each program tested, so the resulting scores can be compared to see which programs perform well and in what areas. The design of fair benchmarks is something of an art, because various combinations of hardware and software can exhibit widely variable performance under different conditions. Often, after a benchmark has become a standard, developers try to optimize a product to run that benchmark faster than similar products run it in order to enhance sales. See also sieve of Eratosthenes.
A relative measure of the performance of a digital signal processor in a particular application.
In computing, a measure of the performance of a piece of equipment or software, usually consisting of a standard program or suite of programs. Benchmarks can indicate whether a computer is powerful enough to perform a particular task, and so enable machines to be compared. However, they provide only a very rough guide to practical performance, and may lead manufacturers to design systems that get high scores with the artificial benchmark programs but do not necessarily perform well with day-to-day programs or data.

To measure the performance of hardware or software.