Ubuntu's LPIA-based MID Edition Can Save 10%+ Power

Below is the Phoronix Test Suite-generated graph when running the Ubuntu 9.04 Beta Netbook Remix. The minimum power consumption recorded was 10726 Milliwatts while the highest recorded point was 14448 Milliwatts. The average recorded power consumption on the Samsung NC10 with the Ubuntu Netbook Remix was 11742 Milliwatts.

Now here's what the line graph looked like when running Ubuntu 9.04 Beta MID on the Atom hardware.

The least power that Ubuntu MID consumed when monitoring its battery consumption was 10005 Milliwatts while the most it consumed during the five minute period was 12798 Milliwatts. The average rate reported by the Phoronix Test Suite was 10546 Milliwatts on Ubuntu MID.

If simply comparing the averages, the i386 Ubuntu Netbook Remix consumed 11% more power than the LPIA-based Ubuntu MID. The most power used by Ubuntu MID during our testing was 12798 Milliwatts, compared to Ubuntu Netbook Remix at 14448 Milliwatts, which there is nearly a 13% difference. The greater power efficiency on the Mobile Internet Device edition of Ubuntu can be attributed to the compile-time optimizations found with the LPIA architecture as well as the different set of packages that are loaded by default compared to Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Ubuntu MID can run with as little as 128MB of RAM. Ubuntu MID is not targeted at the 9~10" netbooks, but if you are serious about conserving power, it is a possibility and either platform can be extensively tweaked. This power consumption benchmarking is quite basic, but it looks to be that Canonical is on the right track with their mobile offerings.

Next week we will be back with more Ubuntu MID and Ubuntu Netbook Remix benchmarks, along with putting them head-to-head against Intel's Moblin V2 Alpha 2 release.