KernelTrap: Interbench, An Interactivity Benchmark

“Con Kolivas, a doctor specializing in anaesthesia, has released
a new benchmark application called Interbench, designed to
benchmark ‘interactivity.’ Con’s earlier benchmark, Contest, was
designed to measure responsiveness. In his release announcement, he
begins, ‘there has been a lot of talk about what makes up a nice
feeling desktop under linux. It comes down to two different but
intimately related parameters which are not well defined.’ He goes
on to explain that the two parameters are ‘responsiveness’ and
‘interactivity.’ The former he defines as, ‘the rate at which your
workloads can proceed under different load conditions.’ The latter
he defines as, ‘the scheduling latency and jitter present in tasks
where the user would notice a palpable deterioration under
different load conditions.’ He continues, ‘responsiveness would
allow you to continue using your machine without too much
interruption to your work, whereas interactivity would allow you to
play audio or video without any dropouts, or drag a gui window
across the screen and have it render smoothly across the screen
without jerks…'”

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