Several companies have used this technology in TPC testing to report performance above the level of their highest performing single system. The advent of TPC testing allowed vendors and users alike to abandon MIPS as a measure of relative system performance. MIPS has now been effectively replaced by the SPEC suite of tests, but like MIPS, SPEC tests are primarily a measure of processor complex performance. 9000 Series 800 H70. The processor-based SPEC test implies the Sun system has a significant performance superiority, nearly 2.7 times better.
TPC testing provides a platform to look at the entire computing workload.
Just using a processor benchmark can be very misleading. Instead everyone is a winner. TPC results help to act as a sanity check on such claims of performance leadership. A company may have an intention to support a particular product, but at present no such product exists, except perhaps in the lab. Or a product is announced and available today and will perform satisfactorily.