I doubt it - each cpu core only has access to the 4 or 8 GB that is on its machine - to communicate to other parts of the setup it will have to go over network

I doubt it - each cpu core only has access to the 4 or 8 GB that is on its machine - to communicate to other parts of the setup it will have to go over network or a shared drive. I think that will be much slower than a highly integrated device like the mac mini just using its hard drive.