NAS
A Revision of the NASA Kernel Benchmark Program

NAS is a Python program which is a revision of David Bailey's NASA kernel benchmark program.

The NAS benchmark program was developed around 1984, and measured computational performance on a representative range of realistic calculations. One motivation for this benchmark was to move beyond the LINPACK benchmark, which focussed on a single highly structured procedure.

Benchmarking computers has become much more difficult now that memory, I/O, multicores and distributed memory have all become significant factors in computing performance. Nonetheless, the NAS benchmarks provide an interesting insight into the floating point processing power of a system, and so, for this reason, a version of the program has been created that retains the functionality of the original, while being somewhat easier to transfer to other languages.

Licensing:

The computer code and data files described and made available on this web page are distributed under the GNU LGPL license.

Languages:

NAS is available in a C version and a C++ version and a FORTRAN90 version and a MATLAB version and a Python version.

Reference:

1. David Bailey, John Barton,
   The NAS Kernel Benchmark Program,
   Numerical Aerodynamics Simulations Systems Division,
   NASA Ames Research Center,
   13 June 1986.

Source Code:

• btrix.py, block tridiagonal solver test.
• cfft2d.py, complex fast Fourier transform test.
• cholsky.py, Cholesky factorization/solve test.
• emit.py, new vortex emission test.
• gmtry.py, geometric calculation test.
• mxm.py, matrix multiplication test.
• vpenta.py, pentadiagonal matrix inversion test.

Examples and Tests:

• nas.py, calls all the tests.
• nas.sh, runs all the tests.
• nas.txt, the output file.

You can go up one level to the Python source codes.