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Keep in mind that this Xeon (E5620) was released in 2010, whereas the Cortex A7-Quad seems to be from 2015? So it would be interesting to compare the ARM cluste

Keep in mind that this Xeon (E5620) was released in 2010, whereas the Cortex A7-Quad seems to be from 2015? So it would be interesting to compare the ARM cluster against a comparably new Intel CPU (say Haswell or Broadwell); in my experience, even a mid-range notebook CPU (i5-5500U) from last year easily outperforms Xeons (E5-2650) even from 2012.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
semi-extrinsic 11y ago
It would also be very interesting to see how much cheaper and more efficient it would be to use a server built today using a low-power 1U blade with a pair of high-end SSDs in RAID0 (or maybe 4 in RAID10). That iSCSI SAN was probably bloody expensive, yet a pair of SSDs today which are orders of magnitude cheaper would run circles around it. OP is storing text documents, so doesn't need a huge disk.
- vidarh 11y ago
  I priced out a server from our usual vendor. A half-depth 1U server with dual 6Gbps SSDs and a ~50% faster CPU and 16GB of RAM would come out at around 1000euro from them (so about 20% of the price in the article). With a 800GB Intel NVMe PCIe card, it'd come out at about 2000 euro (they didn't have prices for smaller NVMe cards in their quote generator at the moment, but you should be able to shave at least 500euro of that and still get the performance). If you'd go for maximum CPU matching the quoted price instead, you'd easily get 8-16 cores each faster than the old Xeon cores in question depending on CPU model and other specs.
Cthulhu_ 11y ago
Good point; I did some googling and I could find this CPU for sale at €32 apiece (it said 'refurbished', possibly reclaimed from old servers?), so if the intent is to build a cheap but performant server, the second-hand market might be worth considering before trying to build a raspberry pi cluster. Actually come to think of it, CPUs from five years ago are not bad; I can see a future in a secondhand CPU market, given how CPU's don't really break from usage (normally).
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  CPUs do break from usage. The integrity of the gates degrades over time, especially if they run hot. As usual, this follows a statistical distribution. An old CPU isn't guaranteed to break, but it is more likely to, especially if it's been overclocked and/or run without good cooling.
vardump 11y ago
> Keep in mind that this Xeon (E5620) was released in 2010, whereas the Cortex A7-Quad seems to be from 2015? 2015? Cortex A7 was released in 2011 to be a lower performance energy efficient in-order core. It's significantly slower per clock than Cortex A9 released in 2007! If you want fairness, just compare it to any Xeon available in 2007 running with just a few watts.
- claudius 11y ago
  Wikipedia¹ lists a Cortex A7 „designed specifically for Raspberry Pi 2“. The Raspberry Pi 2 was released in 2015, so the CPU was released in 2015? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cortex-A7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cortex-A7
  - vardump 11y ago
    From the Wikipedia article: > Broadcom BCM2836 (quad-core A7 + VideoCore IV GPU), designed specifically for Raspberry Pi 2[7] No, it says BCM2836 was designed specifically for Raspberry Pi 2. Cortex A7 is a pretty old design, probably that way RPi 2 costs could be kept low. Edit: Here's Anandtech 2011 article about Cortex A7: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4991/arms-cortex-a7-bringing-cheaper-dualcore-more-power-efficient-highend-devices http://www.anandtech.com/show/4991/arms-cortex-a7-bringing-c... Wikipedia's Cortex series DMIPS/MHz table. It says Cortex A7 (1.9 DMIPS/MHz) is roughly as fast per clock as Cortex A8 (2.0 DMIPS/MHz) released in 2003: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ARMv7-A_cores https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ARMv7-A_cores
    - claudius 11y ago
      Interesting. So how would a reasonably new ARM core compare to this? The point is, the Xeon is definitely outdated and the Cortex A7 seems to be a little bit dusty as well, so…what exactly was the point of this comparison? Two CPUs from two different (or equal, if you take 2010/2011) points in time are roughly comparable?
      - 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

semi-extrinsic 11y ago

It would also be very interesting to see how much cheaper and more efficient it would be to use a server built today using a low-power 1U blade with a pair of high-end SSDs in RAID0 (or maybe 4 in RAID10). That iSCSI SAN was probably bloody expensive, yet a pair of SSDs today which are orders of magnitude cheaper would run circles around it. OP is storing text documents, so doesn't need a huge disk.

vidarh 11y ago
I priced out a server from our usual vendor. A half-depth 1U server with dual 6Gbps SSDs and a ~50% faster CPU and 16GB of RAM would come out at around 1000euro from them (so about 20% of the price in the article). With a 800GB Intel NVMe PCIe card, it'd come out at about 2000 euro (they didn't have prices for smaller NVMe cards in their quote generator at the moment, but you should be able to shave at least 500euro of that and still get the performance). If you'd go for maximum CPU matching the quoted price instead, you'd easily get 8-16 cores each faster than the old Xeon cores in question depending on CPU model and other specs.

Cthulhu_ 11y ago

Good point; I did some googling and I could find this CPU for sale at €32 apiece (it said 'refurbished', possibly reclaimed from old servers?), so if the intent is to build a cheap but performant server, the second-hand market might be worth considering before trying to build a raspberry pi cluster. Actually come to think of it, CPUs from five years ago are not bad; I can see a future in a secondhand CPU market, given how CPU's don't really break from usage (normally).

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
CPUs do break from usage. The integrity of the gates degrades over time, especially if they run hot. As usual, this follows a statistical distribution. An old CPU isn't guaranteed to break, but it is more likely to, especially if it's been overclocked and/or run without good cooling.

vardump 11y ago

> Keep in mind that this Xeon (E5620) was released in 2010, whereas the Cortex A7-Quad seems to be from 2015? 2015? Cortex A7 was released in 2011 to be a lower performance energy efficient in-order core. It's significantly slower per clock than Cortex A9 released in 2007! If you want fairness, just compare it to any Xeon available in 2007 running with just a few watts.

claudius 11y ago
Wikipedia¹ lists a Cortex A7 „designed specifically for Raspberry Pi 2“. The Raspberry Pi 2 was released in 2015, so the CPU was released in 2015? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cortex-A7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cortex-A7
- vardump 11y ago
  From the Wikipedia article: > Broadcom BCM2836 (quad-core A7 + VideoCore IV GPU), designed specifically for Raspberry Pi 2[7] No, it says BCM2836 was designed specifically for Raspberry Pi 2. Cortex A7 is a pretty old design, probably that way RPi 2 costs could be kept low. Edit: Here's Anandtech 2011 article about Cortex A7: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4991/arms-cortex-a7-bringing-cheaper-dualcore-more-power-efficient-highend-devices http://www.anandtech.com/show/4991/arms-cortex-a7-bringing-c... Wikipedia's Cortex series DMIPS/MHz table. It says Cortex A7 (1.9 DMIPS/MHz) is roughly as fast per clock as Cortex A8 (2.0 DMIPS/MHz) released in 2003: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ARMv7-A_cores https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ARMv7-A_cores
  - claudius 11y ago
    Interesting. So how would a reasonably new ARM core compare to this? The point is, the Xeon is definitely outdated and the Cortex A7 seems to be a little bit dusty as well, so…what exactly was the point of this comparison? Two CPUs from two different (or equal, if you take 2010/2011) points in time are roughly comparable?
    - 11y ago