benchmark

Pluralbenchmarks

Formsbenchmarks, benchmarking, benchmarked

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A standard or reference point against which something is measured or evaluated.

   Investors treat the leading index as a benchmark for market performance.

   The committee adopted last year's figures as the benchmark for the new budget.

   Similarstandard, yardstick, touchstone, baseline, gauge

   Note

   The figurative use dates from about 1884 and borrows its logic from the surveyor's mark. A cut in stone gave every later height a fixed starting point, and here the fixed point is a figure or achievement that other results are read against. Criterion is a near neighbor. Marina Hyde in The Guardian (2013) calls the pope's Catholicism "the absolute benchmark of certainty," which stretches the word from numbers to sheer sureness.

2. 2
   verbtransitive

   To measure the performance or quality of something against another similar item, using an impartial, scientific method.

   Independent labs benchmark each new graphics card against its closest rivals, running identical tests on every machine.

   The study benchmarked the hospital's surgical outcomes against those of five similar hospitals in the region.

   Similarcompare, measure, test, assess

   Note

   Here the verb takes an object, and the subject is whoever runs the tests: engineers benchmark a chip, researchers benchmark one hospital against others. Turn it around and you get the results-giving use, in which the item itself benchmarks well or badly. Neutrality is the point, and it separates this from taking a rival as a model: there the aim is to improve one's own product; here it is to learn where something stands.

3. 3
   verbtransitive or intransitive

   To compare a product, process, or result against a competitor's or against a standard in order to improve it.

   The firm benchmarked its delivery times against industry leaders.

   Managers regularly benchmark their teams' output against agreed targets.

   Similarcompare, measure

   Note

   This is the comparative verb, and against carries the comparison: a firm benchmarks its delivery times against a competitor's or against an agreed target. The aim is improvement, not just measurement, since the exercise ends with changes to one's own product or process. It can also stand without an object, as when a company simply says it benchmarks regularly.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A program run to measure the performance of a computer system or its runtime environment.

   The reviewer ran several benchmarks on the new graphics card.

   Each benchmark stresses a different part of the system.

   Note

   In computing the word names the program itself, not just the yardstick. You run a benchmark, and the figures it returns are what get compared across machines. A tester typically runs several, each stressing a different part of the system, because no single program captures overall speed. The verb for scoring results in such a test grows directly out of this use.

5. 5
   verbtransitive or intransitive

   To yield particular performance results when run through a benchmark test.

   The lab benchmarked record speeds on the new storage array.

   High-end chips benchmark faster than budget models.

   Note

   Here the thing being tested becomes the subject: the chip or drive that benchmarks is the one producing the figures. Used intransitively, it is usually followed by at and a score, as in a processor that benchmarks at twice its rival's speed. Used transitively, the results themselves become the object, as when a lab benchmarks record speeds.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   A surveyor's mark cut into a fixed object and recorded on a map, serving as a known reference point for measurements.

   Each benchmark along the railway line carries a recorded elevation.

   Surveyors tied their readings to a brass benchmark set in the courthouse wall.

   Note

   The literal sense is also the oldest, recorded from about 1842. Surveyors cut a mark into stone to secure a bench, which in their jargon meant a kind of bracket, and mounted their measuring equipment on it. Bench plus mark gave the word. Datum is the close synonym. The datum is the reference level itself, and the benchmark is the physical mark that fixes it on the ground.

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