[Beowulf] Shanghai vs Barcelona, Shanghai vs Nehalem

[Mark Hahn]

>> Are there some informal comparisons of Shanghai vs Nehalem?
>
> I beleive that Shanghai performance increase in comparison w/Barcelona will 
> be practically defined only by possible higher Shanghai frequencies.

is that based on anything hands-on?

IMO, AMD needs to get a bit more serious about competing.  if I7
ships with ~15 GB/s per socket and working multi-socket scalability,
it's hard to imagine why anyone would bother to look at AMD.  either:

 	- there is some sort of significant flaw with I7 (runs like a
 	dog in 64b mode or Hf turns into blue cheese after a year, etc).

 	- AMD gets its act together (lower-latency L3, highly efficient
 	ddr3/1333 interface, directory-based coherence).

 	- AMD satisfies itself with bottom-feeding (which probably
 	also means only low-end consumer stuff with little HPC interest).

I've had good reason to be an AMD fan in recent-ish years, but if Intel
is firing on all cylinders, AMD needs to be the rotary engine or have more
cylinders, or something...