The SPEC[1] CINT benchmark has been used as a performance reference for computing in the HEP community for the past 20 years. The SPECint_base2000 (SI2K) unit of performance has been used by the major HEP experiments both in the Computing Technical Design Report for the LHC experiments and in the evaluation of the Computing Centres. At recent HEPiX[3] meetings several HEP sites have reported disagreements between actual machine performances and the scores reported by SPEC. Our group performed a detailed comparison of Simulation and Reconstruction code performances from the four LHC experiments in order to find a successor to the SI2K benchmark. We analyzed the new benchmarks from SPEC CPU2006 suite, both integer and floating point, in order to find the best agreement with the HEP code behaviour, with particular attention paid to reproducing the actual environment of HEP farm i.e., each job running independently on each core, and matching compiler, optimization, percentage of integer and floating point operations, and ease of use.

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A full azimuthal φ-wedge of the ATLAS liquid argon end-cap calorimeter has been exposed to beams of electrons, muons and pions in the energy range 6 GeV ≤ E ≤ 200 GeV at the CERN SPS. The angular region studied corresponds to the ATLAS impact position around the pseudorapidity interval 1.6 < |η| < 1.8. The beam test set-up is described. A detailed study of the performance is given as well as the related intercalibration constants obtained. Following the ATLAS hadronic calibration proposal, a first study of the hadron calibration using a weighting ansatz is presented. The results are compared to predictions from Monte Carlo simulations, based on GEANT 3 and GEANT 4 models.

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