Covering the Waterfront:

An Overview of the GPC Group,
Its Projects and Membership Options

The GPC Group has developed into an umbrella organization for autonomous project groups that develop new graphics benchmark methods and performance reporting procedures. The group supports the development of a range of graphics benchmarks that have a value to the user and vendor communities and is always looking for new groups that might want to operate under the GPC charter.

By joining the Standard Performance Evaluation Corp. (SPEC) in early 1996, the GPC Group became part of an organization that comprises a wide range of performance benchmarking groups. Two years before, the GPC Group reorganized its activities under approved projects to reflect its expanding role in graphics benchmarking. Each project has an organization that operates under the auspices of the parent GPC Group. The project group can adopt the procedures of the GPC Group or develop its own procedures that can be tailored to the objectives of the approved project. This arrangement provides complete autonomy, with the exception that the project group procedures cannot conflict with those of the GPC Group and its parent organization,SPEC.

Support for the Project Groups

The GPC Group provides administrative support for its project groups, but does not participate in the activities, or influence the results of, project efforts. The GPC organization provides a forum for technical interchange, for identifying new projects, for coordinating activities of existing project groups, and for making recommendations regarding direction, priorities and schedules for group activities. Both sustaining and supporting members participate in the technical development efforts as individual experts, not as official representatives of their organizations.

GPC Project Groups

Project groups are the operational bodies for approved projects of the GPC Group. They consist of two types of members: sustaining and supporting. Project group responsibilities include both the business operation and the technical development work of the approved projects.

Sustaining member organizations participate in both elements while supporting individual members who participate in the technical development of a project or project(s). Current GPC project groups are the Application Performance Characterization (APC) project, the Multimedia Benchmark Committee (MBC) project, the OpenGL Performance Characterization (OPC) project, the Picture-Level Benchmark (PLB) project, and the X Performance Characterization (XPC) project.

Who Can Join and How

Sustaining membership in the GPC Group is available for an annual membership fee to any organization committed to fulfilling the Group's goals.

Membership in project groups is open to all those who are knowledgeable in graphics performance measurement and evaluation, and/or who are directly affected by a project group's activities. There are three classes of membership for approved projects:

• Sustaining membership is available to organizations for an annual fee; it includes membership in the GPC Group.
• Supporting membership is open for free to anyone who wishes to contribute to the goals and objectives of the project groups and who participates in its regularly scheduled meetings. Supporting members do not have voting rights, but can participate fully in technical discussions.
• Non-profit organizations, including colleges and universities, are eligible for discounted memberships. Non-profit members receive all the benefits of regular membership, except for voting rights and the free allowance for publishing results in the GPC News. Non-profit members can publish results in the GPC News under non-member publishing guidelines.