Initial explorations of ARM processors for scientific computing

Abstract

Power efficiency is becoming an ever more important metric for both high performance and high throughput computing. Over the course of next decade it is expected that flops/watt will be a major driver for the evolution of computer architecture. Servers with large numbers of ARM processors, already ubiquitous in mobile computing, are a promising alternative to traditional x86-64 computing. We present the results of our initial investigations into the use of ARM processors for scientific computing applications. In particular we report the results from our work with a current generation ARMv7 development board to explore ARM-specific issues regarding the software development environment, operating system, performance benchmarks and issues for porting High Energy Physics software.