In order to determine the best suitability of hardware for Cambodian schools, a number of tests are performed on the hardware. There are three things we want to know about the hardware:

1. The cost (both to purchase it and to run it)
2. The performance
3. Reliability

The following tests will be performed:

The LocoLab is equipped with an energy meter (the Energy Monitor 3000) which measures the actual usage at any given moment (in Watts), and the amount of KW/h over time. The amount of electricity a certain combination of hardware consumes is one of the most important aspects of low cost computer solutions.

Every hardware combination will be subjected to the following test :

• Power Consumption in idle mode

The amount of power used in idle mode is measured by leaving the computer with a minimun of background programs ( eg. No virus scanner or other programs running) for the duration of 1 hour.

• Power Consumption under 100% CPU load

The amount of power used in 100% CPU load mode is measured by using a program that stresses the CPU at maximum power (100%) for the duration of 1 hour.

See an overview of the results here

A CPU Benchmarking Test is designed to measure the CPU performance of a certain combination of hardware. It gives an insight in the relative performance of the equipment. There is no single benchmark which can give an unbiased result. All benchmarks test different performance aspects, which is the reason that we chose to do several tests. A number of benchmark tests have been selected to perform on the hardware in the lab. Note that we have tried to use as many free programs as possible, and we have tried to design every test in such a way that it can easily be reproduced. This allows others to add their test results to the project as well.

• MP3 encoding

Encoding of a WAV file into MP3 is very CPU intensive, making it an excellent tool to benchmark the CPU. The less time it takes to encode several files, the better the CPU performs. In this test, 15 songs of an album of Aretha Franklin are ripped to WAV files and then encoded to the MP3 format. The results are presented in the amount of time it takes to encode the files.

Software used: Lame 3.97, Razorlame 115a
Download links for the software: Lame and Razorlame

• WinRar benchmarking

WinRAR is a free program with a built in benchmark program. The benchmark measures the speed at which it can compress a 10 MB file. The output is in kb/s (kilobyte per second).

Software used: WinRAR 3.71
Download location for the software: WinRAR

• Super Pi calculation

The program Super Pi lets you calculate the value of Pi. Even though the program is old (published in 1995) it is still widely used in benchmark setups. In this test, the value of Pi will be measured in 1 million digits. The result is amount of time it takes.

Software used: SuperPI
Download location for the software: SuperPI

• Blender rendering

Blender is an open source program to do 3D rendering. This rendering is very cpu intensive, and a test render is available for benchmarking. The result is the amount of time used to do the rendering. The program also allows to used multi threading, which makes it ideal to test CPU's with hyperthreading and more than one core as well.

Software used: Blender 2.45
Download location for the software: Blender
Test file for the benchmark download location: Testfile

• 7zip Benchmarking test

The program 7zip has got a built in benchmark to test CPU performance. This benchmark tests the compression and decompression abilities of the CPU and expresses this in a normalised MIPS (million instructions per second). It allows to use more than one thread as well.

Software used: 7zip 457
Download location for the software: 7-Zip

• 7zip Compression test

7zip will also be used in our compression test. The sources of Linux kernel 2.6.25 will zipped up in one standard zip file (default settings). The result is the amount of time it takes to do the compression. The Linux kernel has been chosen because it is publicly available and offers more than 300 MB of textfiles to zip!

Software used: 7zip 457
Download location for the software: 7-Zip
300 MB of textfiles: The Linux kernel

• BOINC benchmark

Boinc is a program which can manage many distributed computation projects. It also has a nice built in benchmark test. It measures the Whetstone and Dhrystone performance. For more information please see the Dhrystone and Whetstone entries on Wikipedia. The results are measured in MIPS.

Software used: BOINC 5.10.45
Download location for the software: BOINC

See an overview of the results here

In order to make the hardware tests less abstract, we have added some “usability tests”. These tests are designed to have some tests to determine if a certain hardware combination is usable in a classroom setting. A few tests with everyday usage scenario's have been developed to see how well a hardware combination performs (or performs at all!) in certain usage scenario's.

• OpenOffice document opening test

In this test a presentation is opened by Openoffice. The speed with which this file is opened is measured. The faster it goes, the better the performance. The file is considered opened when the last slide of the presentation appears on the left side of the screen. The files and software used are all publicly available for download.
Software used: Openoffice 2.1
Download location for the software: OpenOffice
The presentation document used to test is part of this package. The file in question is Lesson01_OSnOpenSource.odp.

• Google earth test

The low cost computers will be used in schools. One promising application to use in schools is Google Earth. It's a Graphical Information Systems (GIS) program, capable of showing maps and satellite images from around the world. This test determines whether Google earth runs on the hardware and what the average cpu usage is while running the software.
Software used: Google Earth 4.2
Download location for the software: Google pack

• Playback of a high definition video.

In this test, a high definition (HD) video is played back. The result can be either that the video is not running at all, that it runs sloppy or that it runs well. When it runs well, the CPU usage is measured as well.
Software used for playback: Videolan 0.8.6d
Download location for the software: Videolan
//HD movie used for testing:// BBC Full Bloom

See an overview of the results here

Harddisks are not considered as a very important element in this research. There are only two criteria: Their powerconsumption should be low and they must be reliable.We will measure a 3.5” IDE drive and a 1.8” SATA drive. This will ensure the biggest difference in power consumption. See our hardware page for more details on the harddisks. Two simple harddisk tests will be performed. One to measure the performance difference and the other to measure the difference in power consumption. All the above described CPU benchmarking and power consumption tests will be performed.

We have purchased several types of power supplies. Old secondhand power supplies, external 12V power supplies, normal cheap power supplies. Please refer to our hardware page for more details. Every powersupply will be tested on the same combination of motherboard, harddisk and memory. The tests are meant to find out the power supply efficiencies, so they will be tested how much they consume at idle and at 100% CPU usage.

There are two things the locally made casings have to be tested for: Temperature and suitability. These are tested in the following way:

• Temperature tests

The CPU is stressed to 100% usage (or both cores on a dual core system). This is done for a least 15 minutes. The internal motherboard sensor temperatures will be used to measure the internal temperature. Furthermore, the outside of the box will be measured on four different spots, and the average will be used. This will be done with different powersupplies, and different harddisks, to see what that does to the temperature of the box.

• Suitability tests

As the box is designed for use in classrooms, it will be screwed to schooltables, and keep running for several hours to see if any problems arise.