Commentary—The “Tar Baby” of Computing: Performance Analysis

It looks so easy. To find the speed of a computer, just take a job and time it. To compare two speeds, or try to establish speed in some type of universal unit, well…. Reporting performance is the “tar baby” of computing, and many authors and researchers have attacked this issue only to find themselves stuck in a mess of shaky logic and shakier assumptions. The more scientific one tries to be, the more difficult the problem is. Barr and Hickman have aimed their efforts at this issue, and have generated some thought-provoking ideas. INFORMS Journal on Computing, ISSN 1091-9856, was published as ORSA Journal on Computing from 1989 to 1995 under ISSN 0899-1499.