About the RG Cloud Working Group

The RG Cloud Group of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) is taking a broad approach, relevant for both academia and industry, to cloud benchmarking, quantitative evaluation, and experimental analysis. The scope of the group is to develop new methodological elements to understand not only of cloud performance, but also of cloud operation and behavior, using primarily diverse quantitative evaluation tools, including benchmarks, metrics, and workload generators.

This group focuses on novel cloud properties such as elasticity, performance isolation, dependability, maintainability, sustainability, and other non-functional system properties, in addition to classical performance-related metrics such as response time, throughput, scalability, and efficiency.  Through our mission, we focus on novel cloud paradigms such as AI services, Functions-as-a-Service, serverless computing, clouds integrating fog and edge devices, cloud and federated ecosystems. We see the cloud as being part of a digital continuum, where datacenters and HPC sites, edge deployments, and end-point devices can seamlessly network and interoperate. Post-von Neumann operations are also welcome in this context.

Our work towards benchmark prototypes includes designing reference architectures, standardizing use cases, observing patterns, and methods for reproducibility. Next to benchmarking, we see simulation, prediction, and AI modeling as core techniques. Emerging techniques include digital twinning, which aims to create a digital copy of the real-world processes, services, and devices, and, combined with monitoring, benchmarking, and analysis capabilities, enhances the observability of the system under test and enables new modes of what-if experimentation.

How to join the RG Cloud Working Group?

The RG Cloud Working Group is a part of the SPEC Research Group. In order to join the RG Cloud Working Group, all prospective members must follow the process of joining the SPEC Research Group, which is described in the Membership and Meetings section of the FAQ