Time to retire our benchmarks

The ISCAS85 benchmarks, used by generations of students, have reached retirement age. In 1985, C7552 was a substantial circuit, containing more than 3,500 gates and consuming enough area to make a reasonably sized chip. In 2010, however, even with all 10 benchmarks combined (13,258 gates), this corresponds to about a quarter of the size of the period at the end of this sentence. The size argument emerged in the 1990s and was somewhat valid then, but it too is getting old.