[Beowulf] Recent comparisons of 1600 MHz external Harpertown vs.235x AMD processors?

[Mark Hahn]

> Here are some measurements I just made on OpenMP STREAM:
>                                         8-thread
>                                       STREAM Copy (GB/s)
> Harpertown -                           ----------------
> Xeon 5410, 2.33 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB:           6.2
> Xeon 5472, 3.0  GHz, 1600 MHz FSB:           7.3
> Barcelona -
> Opteron 2352, 2.1 GHz:                      15.7
> (the 3 other STREAM components were pretty similar to Copy)

very nice.  it would be good to know the memory configuration.

of course, the real question is how well Nehalem will do - 
does anyone have numbers?  it's a sticky time for specifying 
clusters, since current Intel chips have great onchip performance
but are dramatically constrained in decent-sized HPC apps. 
choosing AMD, while defensible based on current memory performance, 
looks extremely iffy otherwise.  (the most recent AMD disclosures 
have them attempting to milk the k10 core for the next couple years (!).)