Benchmarking requires the use of specific valuation methods. With evaluation is meant the level of achieving the target for a particular evaluation item. There are general "methods" respectively approaches as well as IT-supported "software tools" that enable an effective and efficient work.

The following is a list of notable methods and benchmarking software tools.

There are many benchmarking methods each having different analytical focus. The methods are mostly known and will be shown in the following summary.^[1]

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (August 2011)

There are a number software tools that allow the support of different kinds of benchmarking types.

There are numerous suites for examining the performance of a High Performance Computing cluster, including

• ADEPT – 4 suites relating to energy measurements
• HPCC, HPCG, Linpack
• IMB (Intel MPI Benchmark) – gives rates for common MPI-1 point-to-point and collectives
• Mantevo – series of "mini apps" from Sandia National Labs (SNL)
• NAS and NPB
• SHOC – for accelerators
• Stream (memory b/w)

• Benchmarking
• Best practice