(engineering) An organized listing of basic requirements for materials of construction, product compositions, dimensions, or test conditions; a number of organizations publish standards (for example, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, American Petroleum Institute, and American Society for Testing and Materials), and many companies have their own specifications. Also known as specs.
(industrial engineering) A quantitative description of the required characteristics of a device, machine, structure, product, or process.
(1) See specs and specification.
(2) (SPEC) (Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation, Warrenton, VA, www.specbench.org) An organization founded in 1988 to establish standard benchmarks for computers. Its first benchmark was a single CPU rating known as the "SPECmark," in which one SPECmark was equivalent in performance to a VAX 11/780. Although SPEC benchmarks continue to rate CPUs, SPEC has a variety of benchmarks to measure graphics subsystems, Java, Web servers, mail servers, application servers and file servers. Following are the SPEC names for current and retired CPU benchmarks. See benchmark.
SPEC CPU BENCHMARKS
Floating
Current Integer Point
SPEC CPU2006 CINT2006 CFP2006
Retired
SPEC CPU2000 CINT2000 CFP2000
SPEC CPU95 SPECint95 SPECfp95
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Documented requirements for a process, service, system, or product. For example, the specifications for a list rental selection would include the number of names desired, the selection criteria, the format for the output, such as address labels or magnetic tape, and the desired delivery date. It is always important that specifications be comprehensive and accurate. The specifications for a computer system or program would describe the available input and the required output, as well as any processes that should take place in between.
| Specific Performance, Specific Lien | |
| Speculation, Speculative Building |
A part of the contract documents contained in the project manual consisting of written descriptions of a technical nature of materials, equipment construction systems, standards, and workmanship. Under the uniform system, the specifications comprise sixteen divisions.