Skip to content
STIMSMITH

Dhrystone

CodeArtifact WIKI v1 · 6/25/2026

Historical C-language benchmark suite authored by Reinhold P. Weicker, widely used as a synthetic performance metric alongside CoreMark and compliance tests in modern processor verification flows such as those targeting the NaxRiscv RISC-V SoC.

Dhrystone

Dhrystone is a long-standing synthetic benchmark written in C. The reference distribution maintained as a public repository preserves the historical versions of Reinhold P. Weicker's original benchmark, providing a stable, reproducible artifact that downstream projects can build and run unchanged across toolchains.

Origin and distribution

  • Authored by Reinhold P. Weicker.
  • Distributed as a C-language project, with historical revisions preserved in a public source repository (153 stars, 82 forks at the cited snapshot, updated 2026-06-23).

Role in processor verification

Dhrystone is commonly deployed alongside other lightweight benchmarks to gauge software–hardware integration and raw performance numbers on new silicon. In contemporary RISC-V verification methodologies it is grouped with CoreMark as a "real-world benchmark" stage that complements directed compliance suites and constrained-random stress generation:

  • Real-world benchmarking phase: Dhrystone (and CoreMark) are executed to assess performance and software–hardware integration, in addition to booting operating-system images such as FreeRTOS and Linux.
  • This phase is interleaved with directed testing against riscv-tests and riscv-arch-tests for ISA compliance, and with RISCV-DV-generated constrained-random assembly programs that probe edge cases such as misaligned instructions, register dependencies, pipeline hazards, memory-access violations, and unhandled interrupts.
  • A Jenkins-based CI pipeline automates regression runs and scales randomized test generation against UVM-based functional-coverage targets until coverage criteria are satisfied.

In that flow, Dhrystone is positioned as a quick, widely understood performance metric whose output (e.g., DMIPS/MHz) is comparable across many cores, while CoreMark provides a complementary synthetic workload.

Related techniques

Dhrystone implements the real-world benchmarking technique used in modern CPU/SoC verification strategies. It is typically combined with CoreMark and OS-boot tests rather than used in isolation.

LINKED ENTITIES

1 links
Real-world benchmarks IMPLEMENTS

CITATIONS

2 sources
2 citations
[1] Dhrystone is a historical C-language benchmark authored by Reinhold P. Weicker, preserved in a public repository (Keith-S-Thompson/dhrystone). Keith-S-Thompson/dhrystone
[2] In the NaxRiscv SoC verification methodology, Dhrystone is executed in the real-world benchmarking phase alongside CoreMark to assess performance and software–hardware integration, and is complemented by OS-boot, directed compliance, and RISCV-DV constrained-random testing. [PDF] Comprehensive lockstep verification for NaxRiscv SoC integrating ...