eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
The Green 500 list compiled by researchers at Virginia Tech is intended to draw attention to idea that designers of supercomputers should pay more attention to the energy consumption, not just speed or computational prowess.
“In the world of supercomputers, the thinking has traditionally focused entirely on performance,” says Virginia Tech associate professor Wu Feng, who spearheaded the Green 500 project with Kirk Cameron. “No one has worried about the power being consumed. Well, the world has changed. There is a lot of concern right now about the amount of power being consumed by computers and data centers in general, and we felt it was time to do something that really challenged the thinking of the (supercomputer) establishment.”
In fact, as manufacturers have pursued the goal of building supercomputers that can complete hundreds of trillions of floating-point operations per second they have inadvertently created computers that consume so much energy and produce so much heat they require elaborate cooling systems to ensure their proper operation.
The first Green 500 list will be refined in the months and years ahead, adds Feng. Initially, not all companies with computers on the Supercomputer 500 ranking would or could provide energy consumption metrics for their machines. However, based on the feedback received to date, and the attention the Green 500 is generating, Feng believes the list will be more comprehensive in the future and the methodology more refined.
The top of 2007’s list is dominated by IBM’s Blue Gene supercomputers. In fact, IBM had nine out of 10 of the top 10 sites. The only non-IBM installation to crack the top 10 was a Dell PowerEdge cluster at Stanford University. In terms of flops per watt, the top installation was an IBM Blue Gene supercomputer installed at the Science and Technology Facilities Council Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire, England. It achieves 357.23 megaflops per watt.
Much of IBM’s success is due to the use of more efficient processors. The new generation of Blue Gene supercomputers use 850 MHz CPUs compared to 2GHz CPUs used in most supercomputers.
While this is the Green 500’s first year, the genesis for the list dates back to 2001 when Feng was working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He was struggling to maintain the reliability of a supercomputer installed at the laboratory, which was overheating due to the high number of power-hungry processors.
That led him to design a new supercomputer, which focused as much on energy efficiency as power. The result was a machine named Green Destiny, which used 240 Transmeta processors, operating at 667 MHz, and sipped only 3.2 kilowatts of power (about the same as two hair dryers).
Top 25 Most Energy Efficient Supercomputers: 1-5
1. Science and Technology Facilities Council/Daresbury Laboratory
Supercomputer Type: Blue Gene/P Solution
MFLOPS/Watt: 357.23
Power Consuption (kilowatts): 31.10
Speed Ranking (worldwide): 121
2. Max-Planck-Gesellschaft MPI/IPP
Supercomputer Type: Blue Gene/P Solution
MFLOPS/Watt: 352.25
Power Consuption (kilowatts): 62.20
Speed Ranking (worldwide): 40
3. IBM – Rochester
Supercomputer Type: Blue Gene/P Solution
MFLOPS/Watt: 346.95
Power Consuption (kilowatts): 124.40
Speed Ranking (worldwide): 24
4. Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ)
Supercomputer Type: Blue Gene/P Solution
MFLOPS/Watt: 336.21
Power Consuption (kilowatts): 497.60
Speed Ranking (worldwide): 2
5. Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Supercomputer Type: Blue Gene/P Solution
MFLOPS/Watt: 310.93
Power Consuption (kilowatts): 70.47
Speed Ranking (worldwide): 41
Top 25 Most Energy Efficient Supercomputers: 6-10
6. Stanford University/Biomedical Computational Facility
Supercomputer Type: PowerEdge 1950, 2.33 GHz, Infiniband
MFLOPS/Watt: 245.27
Power Consuption (kilowatts): 63.48
Speed Ranking (worldwide): 73
7. Harvard University
Supercomputer Type: eServer Blue Gene Solution
MFLOPS/Watt: 210.56
Power Consuption (kilowatts): 44.80
Speed Ranking (worldwide): 170
8. High Energy Accelerator Research Organization/KEK
Supercomputer Type: eServer Blue Gene Solution
MFLOPS/Watt: 210.56
Power Consuption (kilowatts): 44.80
Speed Ranking (worldwide): 171
9. IBM – Almaden Research Center
Supercomputer Type: eServer Blue Gene Solution
MFLOPS/Watt: 210.56
Power Consuption (kilowatts): 44.80
Speed Ranking (worldwide): 172
10. IBM Research
Supercomputer Type: eServer Blue Gene Solution
MFLOPS/Watt: 210.56
Power Consuption (kilowatts): 44.80
Speed Ranking (worldwide): 173
Top 25 Most Energy Efficient Supercomputers: 11-15
11. IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
Supercomputer Type: eServer Blue Gene Solution
MFLOPS/Watt: 210.56
Power Consuption (kilowatts): 44.80
Speed Ranking (worldwide): 174
12. Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI)
Supercomputer Type: eServer Blue Gene Solution
MFLOPS/Watt: 210.56
Power Consuption (kilowatts): 44.80
Speed Ranking (worldwide): 175
13. University of Canterbury
Supercomputer Type: eServer Blue Gene Solution
MFLOPS/Watt: 210.56
Power Consuption (kilowatts): 44.80
Speed Ranking (worldwide): 176
14. Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ)
Supercomputer Type: eServer Blue Gene Solution
MFLOPS/Watt: 208.31
Power Consuption (kilowatts): 179.20
Speed Ranking (worldwide): 28
15. Computational Biology Research Center, AIST
Supercomputer Type: eServer Blue Gene Solution
MFLOPS/Watt: 208.31
Power Consuption (kilowatts): 89.60
Speed Ranking (worldwide): 52
Top 25 Most Energy Efficient Supercomputers: 16-20
16. EDF R&D
Supercomputer Type: eServer Blue Gene Solution
MFLOPS/Watt: 208.31
Power Consuption (kilowatts): 89.60
Speed Ranking (worldwide): 53
17. Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
Supercomputer Type: eServer Blue Gene Solution
MFLOPS/Watt: 208.31
Power Consuption (kilowatts): 89.60
Speed Ranking (worldwide): 54
18. High Energy Accelerator Research Organization/KEK
Supercomputer Type: eServer Blue Gene Solution
MFLOPS/Watt: 208.31
Power Consuption (kilowatts): 89.60
Speed Ranking (worldwide): 55
19. High Energy Accelerator Research Organization/KEK
Supercomputer Type: eServer Blue Gene Solution
MFLOPS/Watt: 208.31
Power Consuption (kilowatts): 89.60
Speed Ranking (worldwide): 56
20. IBM Rochester, On Demand Deep Computing Center
Supercomputer Type: eServer Blue Gene Solution
MFLOPS/Watt: 208.31
Power Consuption (kilowatts): 89.60
Speed Ranking (worldwide): 57
Top 25 Most Energy Efficient Supercomputers: 21-25
21. Indian Institute of Science
Supercomputer Type: eServer Blue Gene Solution
MFLOPS/Watt: 208.31
Power Consuption (kilowatts): 89.60
Speed Ranking (worldwide): 58
22. DOE/NNSA/LLNL
Supercomputer Type: eServer Blue Gene Solution
MFLOPS/Watt: 205.27
Power Consuption (kilowatts): 2329.60
Speed Ranking (worldwide): 1
23. UCSD/San Diego Supercomputer Center
Supercomputer Type: eServer Blue Gene Solution
MFLOPS/Watt: 205.06
Power Consuption (kilowatts): 67.20
Speed Ranking (worldwide): 93
24. ASTRON/University Groningen
Supercomputer Type: eServer Blue Gene Solution
MFLOPS/Watt: 204.24
Power Consuption (kilowatts): 134.40
Speed Ranking (worldwide): 37
25. Stony Brook/BNL, New York Center for Computational Sciences
Supercomputer Type: eServer Blue Gene Solution
MFLOPS/Watt: 203.77
Power Consuption (kilowatts): 403.20
Speed Ranking (worldwide): 10