Some pretty cool Parallels results

I've been playing with the Parallels virtualization software on my MacBook Pro and finally had a chance to put it to a real test. Well, I'm not sure how good a test it really was, but it was a test nonetheless.

http://www.parallels.com/

OK, here's the rundown: MacBook Pro with a dual-core 2GHz Intel processor, against my three-year-old work Alienware with dual-1.7GHz Athlon processors, against my work PowerMac G5 with dual-2.5GHz PowerPC processors.

The MacBook is running Parallels, which has Fedora Core 4 installed under it as a virtual machine. (BTW, after some searching, I found an xorg.conf file on the Parallels forum that allowed me to run in the MacBook Pro's native resolution of 1440x900 (something like that)). The G5 is running 10.4.3, and the Alienware is running XP.

On each setup, I installed the open-source 3D program called Blender, as well as Python.

http://www.blender.org/
http://www.python.org/

I used a Python script I found online that allows you to import molecular model data in the PDB format. I of course imported a stretch of DNA...

http://www.malte-reimold.de/blender/pdb2blend.html

I stopped timing when it was done converting/importing. And the results? Pretty amazing.

G5 dual 2.5 GHz: 8 min
Dual Athlon 1.7 GHz: 6 min
Dual-core Intel 2 GHz: 2 min!!!

That's running IN A WINDOW while inside of OS X! Now, other performance wasn't that great, but I know one thing... I'm going to need to get a faster PC at work!