[pts] Reference System Comparisons

[Michael Larabel]

While originally planned for Phoronix Test Suite 2.0, I have just pushed 
support for "reference system comparisons" into the Git master 
repository for the Phoronix Test Suite 1.8 release. This initial 
implementation makes it possible to easily compare your system's 
performance results to other reference systems. Of course, quite easily 
you can already compare your results to others via Phoronix Global 
(http://global.phoronix.com/), but the reference systems will be broken 
down into just a few categories -- likely Low, Medium, and High end 
systems. This feature provides a quick assessment at how your Linux, 
*BSD, OpenSolaris, or Mac OS X system is performing compared against 
standard systems.

 From the command-line interface the user can run: phoronix-test-suite 
reference-comparison <saved results identifier>. If that saved results 
file is made up of tests that support this feature, you will then be 
prompted to select which reference systems to compare your results to. 
The reference system names along with their prominent software/hardware 
is listed. After that, the results with the reference system(s) will 
merge and will be displayed in your web-browser.

Furthermore, this feature has also been implemented in the GTK2 GUI. 
Once a test has finished running of a supported test profile, available 
reference systems are then displayed and the user can check the boxes 
for which system(s) for comparing their results.

Below is a YouTube video showing the interface (once the testing has 
started, skip to about 1:50 unless you enjoy watching the terminal).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ2a3Oa3UYg

Within three minutes of running the Phoronix Test Suite, the user can 
already begin to assess how their system is performing.

All of the pts-core changes to offer this reference system comparison 
are now in Git. The only test profile to implement this support right 
now is the encode-ogg test profile. Before the Phoronix Test Suite 1.8 
release, more test profiles may be supported with this feature. By 
Phoronix Test Suite 2.0, a majority -- if not all -- of the test 
profiles should offer this capability with at least some low, medium, 
and high end desktops and possibly a few servers. For the OEM vendors on 
this list, please contact me if you would be interested in submitting 
hardware for use as reference systems or would be interested in 
submitting the results, which will prominently be shown to Phoronix Test 
Suite users in these comparisons.

Any feedback on this feature is certainly welcome.

Michael