[lug] Atom Based Computers

[Stephen Queen]

On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 2:08 PM, Michael J. Hammel <
mjhammel at graphics-muse.org> wrote:

> On Mon, 2010-07-12 at 13:22 -0600, Stephen Queen wrote:
>
> > This strikes me as curious. I would think that a processor running at
> > 1 GHz or better would compile fairly quickly. I figured that the atom
> > was not as fast at the Pentium, but I didn't think it was a dog.  Any
> > Idea why it compiles so slow?
>
> Processor speed is not a good indicator of how fast a processor handles
> a specific task.  Lots of file I/O might do better with more on-board
> cache, for example.  Computationally heavy lifting might need a floating
> point processor.  The PowerPC we have at work is 1GHz but doesn't have
> floating point.  It also seems to have a slow interface to memory since
> a 2048x256 array of integers can't be thresholded fast enough (<200ms)
> even when heavily optimized with the compiler and in the code.
>
> 1GHz is fast but compiling, especially something like the kernel, can
> really tax a processor and the system connected to it.
>
> --
> Michael J. Hammel <mjhammel at graphics-muse.org>
>
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So how would I determine which cpu/main board would be most appropriate for
my application? More importantly, how would I determine in advance, which
cpu resources my application is going to consume or even tax? Off the top of
my head, I would think that the main resource my application would need is
for I/O on the network. I could be fooling myself though. There is a lot of
data coming in small bursts of around 1 to 1.5 Kbytes a second. I tried
looking at it with a profiler at one time, but it seemed that the profiler
actually used as much resources as my app., so it just muddied the water.
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