I don't know, but the Snapdragon has 1MB of Cache, while the Xeon has 20MB of Cache. Furthermore, the Xeon actually has a multi-socket connector... so two Xeons can talk to each other at a rate of 25.6 GB/s through QPI (QuickPath Interconnect).
So my bet on memory is that Xeon wins that too.
On the multi-processor communications issue... I doubt that the Snapdragon would have PCIe connections... let alone a high-bandwidth low-latency connection like the Xeon's QPI.
There's a reason why supercomputers stick with Intel or AMD. They've got the processor power, the performance per watts, and I/O girth to communicate to other processors. A small embedded chip (like Snapdragon), just doesn't have the features to make a supercomputer out of.
ARM does have promise though, its just not in Snapdragons. As noted, the primary issue in Supercomputers is bandwidth (so that the processors can talk to each other).
Calxeda for example has spent a lot of time trying to solve this interconnect issue. Each Calxeda card is composed of 4 CPUs. Every CPU has 8 10Gb (aka: 1GB) ethernet links, 2 8xPCI connections and more.
Its a relatively young project, but they're moving towards the right direction. There are rumors that Facebook is deploying a Calxeda server.
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Does Linpack even touch the memory bus?
I don't know, but the Snapdragon has 1MB of Cache, while the Xeon has 20MB of Cache. Furthermore, the Xeon actually has a multi-socket connector... so two Xeons can talk to each other at a rate of 25.6 GB/s through QPI (QuickPath Interconnect).
So my bet on memory is that Xeon wins that too.
On the multi-processor communications issue... I doubt that the Snapdragon would have PCIe connections... let alone a high-bandwidth low-latency connection like the Xeon's QPI.
There's a reason why supercomputers stick with Intel or AMD. They've got the processor power, the performance per watts, and I/O girth to communicate to other processors. A small embedded chip (like Snapdragon), just doesn't have the features to make a supercomputer out of.
OK, I'm sold.
ARM does have promise though, its just not in Snapdragons. As noted, the primary issue in Supercomputers is bandwidth (so that the processors can talk to each other).
Calxeda for example has spent a lot of time trying to solve this interconnect issue. Each Calxeda card is composed of 4 CPUs. Every CPU has 8 10Gb (aka: 1GB) ethernet links, 2 8xPCI connections and more.
Its a relatively young project, but they're moving towards the right direction. There are rumors that Facebook is deploying a Calxeda server.