[formerglory]

So, my girlfriend just recently got a Mini 10v for classes, and I spent several hours setting up Win7/Mac OS on it for her. It's a wonderful machine, and I was going to get one to replace my Mini 9, but got an Acer instead. (I'm probably going to come back to the 10v though, for OS X). I do a lot of coding/simulation in MATLAB (engineering student), so I thought I'd benchmark her Mini against my Acer 1410 and my quad-core desktop. I'm posting these here just to give people who are interested in scientific computing and the Mini 10v.

The program I ran is a GPS app that I wrote for my global nav systems class. In layman terms, it takes in some nav data, processes it, and calculates your position/coordinates.

Mini 10v, Atom N280, running W7 Pro x32, 2GB of RAM, stock 160GB HDD, MATLAB R2007b:
188.76 seconds (avg of three runs)

Acer 1410, Celeron SU2300 1.3 GHz dual-core ULV, W7 Pro x32, 2GB RAM, stock 160GB HDD, MATLAB R2007b:
100.32 seconds (avg of 3 runs)

Intel Q9400 2.6 GHz quad-core desktop, W7 Pro x64, 7GB of RAM, 640GB WD Caviar Black, R2007b:
30.65 seconds (avg of 3 runs)

So, there you have it, folks. I'm not trying to dissuade anyone from buying a Mini 10v, OTOH, I'm just saying what you're in for. It's a great little computer that can do 90% of the tasks most people do. If I get one, I'm still going to put MATLAB on it, but I just won't be doing any heavy lifting with it.

I ordered an Intel X-25M G2 80GB for my desktop the other day, but I might stick it in the GF's netbook and run a few benchmarks with it. It's like putting a Ferrari engine in a Ford Focus .

[holmes4]

That's actually not too shabby, considering the N280 is single-core. You're absolutely correct, though - the Mini is not an ideal platform for scientific computing, but it can eventually get there in many applications.

[w7ox]

No big surprise. Number crunching is CPU intensive and the Atom CPU is not designed for "intense"

Phil

[holmes4]

In particular, the microarchitecture of the Atom is derived from the Pentium Pro. It supports SSE3 instructions but performance is low.

[formerglory]

Originally Posted by holmes4

In particular, the microarchitecture of the Atom is derived from the Pentium Pro. It supports SSE3 instructions but performance is low.

SSE3 is part of the special sauce that allows OS X to run decently on the 10v.

Gonna put up some more benchmarks in a bit, with the 'bench' command.

[blehmann]

I missed this thread and I am glad to have found it. When you ran your benchmarks in Matlab, what fraction of the cpu is used by the program? When I have tried to run Mathematica code on the mini 10v and it only uses a few percent of the cpu according to activity monitor.

[formerglory]

Originally Posted by blehmann

I missed this thread and I am glad to have found it. When you ran your benchmarks in Matlab, what fraction of the cpu is used by the program? When I have tried to run Mathematica code on the mini 10v and it only uses a few percent of the cpu according to activity monitor.

I'll check that out when I do my 'bench' runs and my own code runs. Should have them up tomorrow sometime after class.

[formerglory]

Alright folks, round two of benchmarks!

These measurements were taken using the built-in 'bench' command in MATLAB, with no other programs or non-essential processes running. I kept Microsoft Security Essentials running, and that's about it. Below are the printouts of each of the three computers I tested (Mini 10v, Acer 1410, Q9400 Core2 Quad desktop). Same specs as in the previous post.

Explanation of the tests, at MathWorks' site:
http://www.mathworks.com/access/help...ref/bench.html

Mini 10v:



Acer 1410:



Core 2 Quad Q9400 Desktop:



Just got my Intel X-25M G2 80GB drive today, and the GF has been ever so kind in allowing me to take over her machine for even more time to run some more benchmarks with the new SSD. It's going into my desktop ultimately, but I'm interested to see how much of a real-world difference a decent SSD makes, especially with MATLAB.

As for the processor & Task Manager, I didn't get to see it on the 10v, but I know on the 1410 and desktop the processor didn't spike up to 100% while running my GPS app and the bench command.

Questions or comments? Feel free to ask!

[karthiknihi]

I got my dell mini 10v about a week back ( yaa ) and have been using it for matlab coding since. My primary purpose was to be able to check mail in bed, but matlab runs moderatly fast on my XP machine. It does tend to get REALLY hot though (upto 70 C) when used for a three hour class duration.

[pduves]

I'm also an engineering student. Been looking around for a light, portable netbook/non-DVD-ROM computer that can handle MATLAB and some Mathematica.

This post is much appreciated!

Any recommendations regarding 11z customization?