Big data on low power cores: Are low power embedded processors a good fit for the big data workloads?

The traditional low-power embedded processors such as ARM and Atom are entering the high-performance server market. At the same time, big data analytics are emerging and dramatically changing the landscape of data center workloads. Thus, the question of whether low-power embedded architectures are suited to process big data applications efficiently, is becoming important. In this work, through methodical investigation of power, performance measurements and comprehensive system level analysis, we demonstrate that low power embedded architectures can provide significant energy-efficiency for processing big data analytics applications.