  We study an SU(3) gauge theory with Nf=8 degenerate flavors of light fermions
in the fundamental representation. Using the domain wall fermion formulation,
we investigate the light hadron spectrum, chiral condensate and electroweak S
parameter. We consider a range of light fermion masses on two lattice volumes
at a single gauge coupling chosen so that IR scales approximately match those
from our previous studies of the two- and six-flavor systems. Our results for
the Nf=8 spectrum suggest spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking, though fits to
the fermion mass dependence of spectral quantities do not strongly disfavor the
hypothesis of mass-deformed infrared conformality. Compared to Nf=2 we observe
a significant enhancement of the chiral condensate relative to the symmetry
breaking scale F, similar to the situation for Nf=6. The reduction of the S
parameter, related to parity doubling in the vector and axial-vector channels,
is also comparable to our six-flavor results.
