We give an indepth performance comparison between FT-1500A and Intel XEON processors. At the micro benchmarking level, we measure the maximum performance (FLOPS, memory access latency, and bandwidth) that the two platforms can achieve. At application level, we select a typical ocean forecasting numerical simulation software, and study how to port an open source code to FT-1500A processor and commercial Intel XEON processor, discuss the singlecore performance and the multi-core performance of the software on the two platforms, analyze the reasons for performance difference, and propose corresponding optimization suggestions. Overall, we conclude that the FT-1500A processor already has a good ecosystem basis including operating system, compiler and the related tools, which facilitates the porting process of classical scientific programs. Although there is a noticeable performance slowdown compared to the commercial Intel XEON processor, we argue that FT-1500A processor is still a promising candidate for future applications especially when power consumption is taken into account.