I've run TG2 on an Asus Eee netbook, which has an Atom CPU. They're just regular x86, but tuned for low power use. They are, however, less powerful as a result of that lower power use. They're very useful for workloads that require large numbers of concurrent threads, where performance of each thread is less important than the total number, or of course for workloads where overall power use is critical. But they absolutely do not and will not beat regular desktop Intel CPUs (e.g. latest Haswell), clock-for-clock, dollar-for-dollar, or perhaps even watt-for-watt (the latter point is perhaps debatable). What's the point of them then? Well, they're more efficient overall, so they are lower power at idle, easier to cool, etc. As I said, they're good for certain specialized workloads, a database server for example where threads and I/O are a bigger bottleneck than raw CPU power in many cases. I really don't think they'd be good for TG though, especially vs. a nice 6 core, 12 thread Haswell, or better yet an E Series CPU next year when they move to 8 cores/16 threads.
All that being said I'd be interested to see benchmarks. Which reminds me, I really need to update the benchmark!
- Oshyan
