What is an accurate and universal scale for processing power?

For example, I am interested in stringing a bunch of raspberry pi computers to make "micro-supercomputers" conversely I could go for buying up old laptops and using their processors... how can I compare the different types of processors eg. intel, amd, etc... in a useful way rather than some arbitrary benchmark like 5/10 according to benchmark services...

should I have them try and solve something, primes, whatever?

See I don't know...

I'd appreciate any input.

There are many CPU benchmarks you can use.

I use PassMark, as well as Blackhole Bench.

Alternatively, you could use the same GPU, and run Unigine Valley.

Usually MIPS/FLOPS will give you some sort of reference for processing power for a given CPU. It may vary depending on amount of cores and how efficient the application itself is.

http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/perf.html

I found this white paper which mentions thermal design power

http://www.intel.com/content/dam/doc/white-paper/resources-xeon-measuring-processor-power-paper.pdf

thanks for your response

I'll have to look into this later, I've got a project in mind for distributed computing but it would be nice to see how useful processors are compared to each other like raspberry pi versus. desktop, versus, mobile, versus laptop, versus notebook, etc...

Look at the rasberry pi 2. They're still the same price as the original.

GreenAce92 said:

I found this white paper which mentions thermal design power

http://www.intel.com/content/dam/doc/white-paper/resources-xeon-measuring-processor-power-paper.pdf

thanks for your response

I'll have to look into this later, I've got a project in mind for distributed computing but it would be nice to see how useful processors are compared to each other like raspberry pi versus. desktop, versus, mobile, versus laptop, versus notebook, etc...

Click to expand...

Thermal Design Power (TDP) is just a measurement of electricity and not 'power' in a computational sense. Usually you'll see TDP ratings on CPU has a heat-related specification for the cooling capacity you'll require to run the processor at the reference specifications.