How to use the benchmark program on your machine

The benchmark program is designed to roughly test how fast your machine is at doing the sort of things that are involved in timetabling. The program will tell you how long you can run your algorithm for on the competition timetabling problem instances. It is not possible to provide perfectly fair benchmarks across many platforms and algorithms, and we know that the benchmark may be kinder to some people than others.

Allowable machines

The benchmark is only suitable for individual, single processor machines. It is not suitable for, for example, specialist parallel machines or clusters. For this reason, only individual, single processor machines are allowed to be used for the competition.

Getting the program

If you are using a PC, then please get the executable and data file here for Linux or Windows. If you are using a non-PC system then please contact us to obtain the program.

Running the program

To run the program you need the executable and the data file medium.tim. The two files need to be in the same directory.

The program should be run when the machine is not being used for anything else. Things to check for are:

• There are no unnecessary windows open
• There are no significant OS background processes going on (e.g. back-up)
• There are no remote users on the computer
• There are no CPU sharing processes running (e.g. SETI at home, United Devices, DREAM)

The program will report how long it took, and hence the length of time you can run your timetabling algorithm for (for each instance).

With our executables the benchmark takes around 300 seconds to run on a 500MHz PC under Linux and 500 seconds on the same PC under Windows 2000. If the results you get are not roughly in line with this, then please get in touch with us, but bear in mind that the exact speed of your computer depends on a large number of factors in addition to the clock speed.