Technology

New List Ranks 'Green' Supercomputers

By Tariq Malik, LiveScience Staff Writer

posted: 31 October 2007 02:06 pm ET

: BlueGene/L, the fastest computer in the world, is located in the Terascale Simulation Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Credit: LLNL
: The low-power, high-performance supercomputer Green Destiny developed by researcher Wu Feng, of Virginia Tech. Credit: Wu Feng/Virginia Tech.

Supercomputers can draw enough power to run a small city and cost millions of dollars to operate each year, so a new list will reward machines built with more than computation in mind.

Set to launch in November, the Green500 Supercomputer List will rank the world's powerful computing machines not just by their performance and speed, but also by their energy efficiency and reliability.

"Wasted power can equate to wasteful carbon emissions when the electricity comes from coal sources," said computer scientist Kirk Cameron of Virginia Tech, who is compiling the list with colleague Wu Feng. "Thus it is both economically sound and environmentally sound to improve the power efficiency of supercomputers."

Feng and Cameron conceived of the Green500 list as a companion to the Top 500 supercomputer list after noticing that the average achieved performance of new machines appeared to be leveling off, even as peak performance and power consumption increased.

Japan's Earth Simulator supercomputer, for example, generates enough heat during operation to warm a domed stadium, so elaborate cooling systems are required and the maintenance of that increases costs, the researchers said. Plans for Google's new data center at The Dalles, Ore., by comparison, will draw on affordable local power and cooling water from the nearby Columbia River, they added.

Cameron has worked since 2002 to demonstrate that supercomputers can preserve performance levels while simultaneously reducing power consumption. Feng led the development of Green Destiny, a low-power, high-performance machine that rated alongside the Cray T3D MC1024-8 supercomputer at No. 393 on the Top 500 list in 2002.

“The Green500 is a work in progress," Cameron said. "Over time we anticipate increased participation and improvements in the ability of the list to reflect high performance and energy efficiency as technologies improve."