"Benchmarking is the process of comparing one's business processes and performance metrics to industry bests and/or best practices from other industries." Wikipedia Most of the large and highly professional companies/organization/research institution use best practice benchmark to continually learn and improvements. Some of the organizations has similar benchmark as to others. Like NASA, American Express and British Telecom have the similar program for their Human Resource department.
Evaluate or check (something) by comparison with a standard: "we are benchmarking our performance against external criteria".
It is a way to tell how well your computer preforms under intensive tasks. it's based on a number or it could be as simple as the frame rates received in a popular game.
Its is the process of determining who sets the standard and what that standard is. It is done to motivate people to improve toward that goal and simply defined as a continuous process to find and implement best