File Exchange Pick of the Week

Bob's pick this week is How fast is your graphics card? by Michael Kleder

The title is brilliant. When browsing submissions do you ever wonder about its motivation? I see many submissions that explain what an M-file does but not why or when you should use it. You probably know immediately whether you care about this submission or not. Kudos to Michael for being so reader centric.

The rating comments also caught my eye. As I read through them I realized users were having a group conversation of sorts. Most readers don't leave comments (you know who you are) but take away observations all the same. It reminds me of a meeting where a few folks do all the talking but others participate by listening and learning. In person we also communicate with expressions and body language. The download numbers say something about how many others probably tried Michael's benchmark but without ratings or comments we don't know who nodded her head or furrowed his brow before moving on. I really appreciate all of you who take a minute to share your feedback. Thanks for setting a good example.

Michael's test strategy also intrigued me. Watching the measurements bounce around and settle down made it more interesting to watch. It got me thinking about what it must be doing. For example, my score ramped up to a stable value which suggested the program averages all runs so the initial delay eventually amortizes out of significance along with measurement noise. A look at the code confirmed that. But I also expected to see a while loop repeating for a minute and count the number of iterations to calculate RPM. So I was surprised to find a fixed for loop instead. You might prefer to loop until the score changed by less than some tolerance. It goes to show there are different ways to solve a problem. It's fun to learn programming tips and tricks from others as well.

Comments?

Get the MATLAB code

Published with MATLAB® 7.8

<pre class="code">
a = magic(3);
sum(a)
</pre>