{"id":2888,"date":"2012-04-10T13:15:13","date_gmt":"2012-04-10T12:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/?p=2888"},"modified":"2026-03-26T16:37:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T20:37:20","slug":"comparing-apples-with-apples","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/2012\/04\/10\/comparing-apples-with-apples\/","title":{"rendered":"Comparing apples with apples"},"content":{"rendered":"

I often joke about having a “supercomputer” on my desk. It is actually a moderately powerful desktop PC, which is not really stretched by the work that I expect it to do. But, at least I am not normally left twiddling my thumbs waiting for it to do something. I have this computer, instead of a powerful laptop, as I concluded that, when traveling, I did not need to lug an enormous computer around; a small notebook [netbook] is quite sufficient and, nowadays, my iPad can be even better.<\/p>\n

But, I digress. What I am interested in is the comparison of my modest PC with a supercomputer and how that rates against embedded devices …<\/p>\n

I recall that, while a student at university, I was playing with a mathematical puzzle<\/a> and enlisted the help of a supercomputer in a remote city to do my calculations. I sent off the “job” and, after a couple of days, I got a printout back saying that I had consumed my quota of 20 minutes of CPU time, but not arrived at a solution. I have often wondered just home much computing power I had had access to. Now I have an idea.<\/p>\n

Let’s consider a typical [quite high end] embedded processor: the Zynq Cortex-A9 [ARM processor embedded in a Xilinx FPGA device]. It is a dual core device running at 800 MHz. It has a theoretical peak floating point performance [single precision] of 12.8 GFLOPS. It consumes around 1 Watt of power.<\/p>\n

Now, compare that with a desktop PC CPU – an Intel “Ivy Bridge”. This is a quad core device running at 3.5 GHz. It has a theoretical peak floating point performance [single precision] of 224 GFLOPS. It consumes around 80 Watts of power.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>So, this illustrates the wide range of performance options with modern CPUs. How does this compare with a 1980s supercomputer? Let’s consider a Cray X-MP. This was a dual core machine running at 105 MHz. It has a theoretical peak floating point performance [double precision] of 200 MFLOPS. It consumes around 60 Kilowatts of power.<\/p>\n

Things have changed! Clearly, the description of my desktop PC is not unreasonable and maybe I need to revisit my mathematical puzzle. I guess that what I learn from this is that engineers who complain that they have not got enough CPU power for their embedded application do not know when they are well off.<\/p>\n

Thanks to my colleague Brooks Moses for drawing my attention to these statistics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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