Perfect differece with example for getsingleton and getmodel.
Mage::getSingleton()
Mage::getSingleton() will first check if the same class instance exists or not in the memory. If the instance exists then it will return the same object from the memory. So Mage::getSingleton() is faster than Mage::getModel().
Example
$product1 = Mage::getSingleton('catalog/product');
$product2 = Mage::getSingleton('catalog/product');
$product1 and $product2 both will share same memory of OS and return only one instance each time.
Mage::getModel()
Mage::getModel() will create a new instance of an object each time even such object exists in configuration.
Example
$product1 = Mage::getModel('catalog/product');
$product2 = Mage::getModel('catalog/product');
$product1 and $product2 both have different instant of same object and also occupy different memory
Mage::getResourceModel()
As far as I know, all collections in Magento are resource models. They are instantiated by
Mage::getResourceModel()
or
Mage::getModel()->getCollection()
(说白了就是:Mage::getResourceModel('module/model_collection')
相当于 Mage::getModel('module/model')->getCollection())
It doesn't really matter which function you use; the latter one simply calls the first one. The Magento team simply chose to make collections part of the resource, probably because collections need to query the database a lot. Usually, you will not have to call Mage::getResourceModel()
for anything else than collections.