Added benchmarks + suite related to my thesis work

[eastlund]

This PR contains a large part of my thesis work that involves creating a benchmark suite for Encore as well as some benchmark programs to measure the performance of Encore. The benchmarks themselves are explained in short in a description file located in their respective folders.

The Makefiles included are somewhat lacklustre and could be greatly improved but are included to help you get things running.

The benchmarks folder contains the following:

• Makefile to compile all programs
• Readme contains information about the benchmark suite software in detail and explains the role of
  • config.rb
  • run.rb
  • runner.rb
  • helper.rb
• data contains a file that describes the purpose of the folder, may be redundant?
• programs contains
  • general which contains
    • Makefile to compile all programs in this folder (only big exists yet)
    • big which contains the "Big" benchmark
  • pl_shootout contains two benchmarks from the pl shootout game, namely:
    • chameneos
    • fannkuch
• rbfiles
  • contains all .rb files to run the corresponding benchmarks, see Readme in benchmarks folder for more information about these files.

[eastlund]

Sorry about the big commit, realized too late in the process of adding all the files that it would be good to divide them into different commits.

[supercooldave]

Given that this does not touch the main code base, and adds significant value, it should be accepted assuming that there are no silly errors.

There may be places where we think we could have done better – then do so after it has been committed. Mikael has virtually finished his bachelors and won't have the time to improve this – hopefully, he'll come back for a masters project with us ;-)

[kikofernandez]

Agree. Idea: Wouldn't it be good if he could do a presentation about the benchmark suite software in a Friday meeting?

[eastlund]

I could probably do that, but I'm not sure that I have time to prepare a "formal presentation" so a quick demonstration would probably be a better fit.

Feel free to ask me questions about the things included in this PR as well if you have any (here in the comment section), I'll answer them as well as I can.

Hopefully I haven't forgotten to add some files. :)