MATLAB: Home PC or workstation for MATLAB

MATLABprocessorsimulinkworkstation

I am due to specify a new PC to use for my MATLAB work. The most demanding tasks are typically repeatedly running long (couple of hours simulated time) Simulink simulations at small sample times (couple of microseconds) and plotting and otherwise processing (fairly simple like averaging, root mean square, etc.) the data. The simulations are usually time-varying and often of stiff systems. Ususally I run the simulations in series (tuning model and control parameters, etc.) although sometimes they could run in parallel for Monte-Carlo-type simulations, should MATLAB allow so (Parallel Processing Toolbox?).
Does anyone have information/ideas about whether the 'workstations' offered by companies such as Dell and Lenovo would perform significantly 'better' (mainly faster) than 'home PCs' at a similar price, say £1200/US$2000/Euro1400 for guidance? I am assuming the same RAM, say 8GB (trying to get 16GB, but that may exceed the budget).
Looking at Intel CPUs only, I have noticed that (mid-higher spec) 'home PCs' (which is all we use in the office at the moment) usually come with i5 or i7 CPUs, whereas 'workstations tend to come with a variety of Xeon CPUs. Is there any benchmarking data on whether (current, lower-end) Xeon CPUs offer an advantage over an i7, or vice versa, for the type of Simulink work described above?

Best Answer

The way I look at such questions is to look at what's the bottleneck on the system.
  • If you are using the swap file heavily, I'd look at more RAM.
  • If one processor is pegged when you are doing your run, I favor clock speed.
  • If you can benefit from parallel computation, I go for cores.
  • If you do a lot of disk I/O, I look at SSD and a fast SATA interface.
  • It sounds like everything is local, so I'm not addressing network.
  • And, of course the budget!
If you are on Windows 7, use the Resource Monitor (start Task Manager, then click the "Performance" tab and "Resource Monitor" to get a nice overview of all these systems. Other operating systems have similar tools.
As for the processor question, Intel has a nice comparison tool:
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processor-comparison/compare-intel-processors.html
Generally (there are exceptions)
  • i5 is a 4 core processor without hyperthreading
  • i7 is a 4 core processor with hyperthreading
  • Xeon is a 6 or 8 core processor with hyperthreading.
Clock speeds vary throughout each of the lines, with cost generally increasing towards the fastest chip.
In terms of workstation versus home PC, generally the workstation offers things like
  • Multiple CPUs (single, dual or quad)
  • Space and interfaces for additional stuff (GPUs, hard drives)
  • The ability to put in more RAM (I've seen up to 1TB offered)
  • Multiple network interfaces
  • Higher capacity power supply
If the above matter to you, then the workstation is "better". But if they don't, then they offer little value.
For specific comparisons there are many hardware sites. http://www.cpubenchmark.net/ concentrates on benchmarks of CPU performance, but Tom's Hardware, Anandtech, etc also post in-depth reviews of hardware, too.
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