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The 2023 SPECtacular Award Winners
The SPECtacular Award is given to individuals who have significantly exceeded
expectations in their contributions to SPEC.
Dedicated Service
André Bauer, University of Würzburg and the University of Chicago
Over the past five years, André Bauer has been actively involved in two SPEC Research Group (RG) Working Groups — RG Predictive Data Analytics and RG Cloud — making significant contributions in both. André successfully contributed to and led several research activities within these groups, which resulted in a number of high-quality computer science publications to the International Conference on Performance Engineering (ICPE) Proceedings, IEEE Transactions on Services Computing (TSC), and ACM Transactions on Modeling and Performance Evaluation of Computing Systems (ToMPECS). André has held several RG committee leadership positions including, editor of the annual RG newsletter, release manager of the RG Cloud Working Group and founder and chair of the SPEC Predictive Data Analytics Group. Additionally, André has served the SPEC research community in organizing events, as a reviewer on the ICPE artifact evaluation committee, and as the publicity chair for the ICPE. André also contributed to the SPEC Research Tool Repository with the forecasting benchmark Libra and the microservice reference application TeaStore.
Technical Leadership
Brian Bothwell, Lenovo
In 2022, Brian Bothwell was involved in an initiative that had a significant impact on all three Graphics and Workstation Performance Group (GWPG) subcommittees. He architected and championed a unified GUI framework that would create a consistent user interface for all GWPG benchmarks, as well as provide a new release control and software development model. This is a major initiative that will significantly accelerate benchmark development, increase benchmark ease-of-use and ease-of-installation, and further SPEC's reputation for professionalism among the user community. This framework, under which all new GWPG benchmarks will be developed, was first rolled out in the new SPECapc for Solidworks 2022 benchmark. Brian contributed hundreds of hours of his time to the effort, including lengthy discussions with various teams. His flexibility and wisdom enabled teams to strike the perfect balance between fully implementing the vision right away and taking an iterative approach that allows for faster progress on interim releases. Brian was a true workhorse in both troubleshooting issues and contributing ideas related to increasing simplicity. He also made tremendous contributions to the codebase.
Outstanding Leadership
Ross Cunniff, NVIDIA
The release of the SPECviewperf 2020 v3.0 Linux Edition benchmark would not have happened without the tireless effort of Ross Cunniff. He identified the need for the benchmark, took leadership of the project, and pushed it through to completion, pulling in resources to get the job done. Ross brings a critical deep understanding of the workstation market, who the users are, what their challenges are, and why a Linux version is so important to both users and vendors. He also understood that creating a Linux version of the benchmark would increase the number of vendors and businesses depending on the industry gold standard workstation graphics benchmark and expanding the reach and prestige of SPEC as an organization. His value to SPEC extends well beyond his input on SPECviewperf. Ross served as a founding Board member for the MLCommons benchmark consortium and brings a broad industry perspective to SPEC. As the chair of the SPECgpc Committee, Ross is highly involved, supporting other Graphics and Workstation Performance Group (GWPG) committees whenever necessary and contributing to the development and refinement of GWPG policies to increase GWPG's resilience and professionalism.
Technical Leadership
Trey Morton, Dell
As the 2022 chair of the Graphics and Workstation Performance Group's (GWPG) SPECapc Committee, Trey Morton continually pushed to build momentum to increase application benchmark output, knowing that if he took his foot off the pedal it would be too easy for the group to fall behind. His efforts came to fruition with an unprecedented five benchmark releases and updates, including for 3ds Max, Maya and SolidWorks. This was a monumental feat, given the small group of people who are actively involved in benchmark development. As SPECapc Chair, Trey's goal was ensuring SPECapc stays on top of the industry and is always increasing engagement with the ISV community to improve the quality and utility of SPEC's benchmarks. He always looked for opportunities to broaden GWPG's application coverage by opening doors with additional ISVs. Trey also recognized the importance of adding new benchmark models that exercise new application capabilities in the way that real users use them.
Outstanding Leadership
Alex Shows, Dell
In May 2021, Alex Shows was nominated as the inaugural Chair of the Board Communications (Comms) Committee, and he took on this role with his typical gusto, charm and tenacity. His leadership has been instrumental in progressing the Committee's goal of shining a clearer light on the work SPEC does to further state-of-the-art performance benchmarking. This includes working closely with SPEC's PR/Marketing representative and the Comms committee members, launching the SPEC blog, supporting the launch of the new SPEC newsletter, and ensuring Comms services are available to all Committees. Alex also participated in endless meetings to get the new SPEC logo designed and approved, including writing the first draft of a comprehensive brand guide. A dedicated and tireless member of SPEC, Alex has also taken on a range of projects, including coordinating with SPEC Groups on external communications procedures and activities, reviewing and updating the SPEC publicity policy, updating the SPEC website FAQ, updating the leadership section of the website, creating a Wiki to house Comms Committee collateral and updates, and so much more.
Technical Contribution
Frédérique Silber-Chaussumier, ARM
As a member of the SPEC CPU Subcommittee, Frédérique Silber-Chaussumier has taken ownership of six difficult benchmark candidates for SPEC CPUv8 — each a challenge in and of itself, and all important to the success of CPUv8. The very first — and the largest — benchmark in the original 1989 SPECmark suite was 001.gcc with 139,000 lines of code. Now, 33 years later, for its distant descendant, 721.gcc, this project leader wrestles with nearly 4 million lines of code. Frédérique has successfully ported 721.gcc to multiple platforms despite the fact that the project might prove too unwieldy, underscoring her determination and grit.
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