Top 500 Supercomputer List Ranks Energy And Power Efficient Supercomputers

Blacksburg, VA (AHN) - The Green500 List will be launched this November to encourage supercomputer designs that are more energy- and power-efficient. It will complement the Top 500 Supercomputer List.

"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 and environmentally sound to improve the power efficiency of supercomputers."

The Green500 will rank the world's powerful computing machines not just by their performance and speed, but also by their energy efficiency and reliability.

Power and heat have boosted the costs of powering and maintaining a supercomputer that now exceed the hundreds of millions spent on hardware acquisition. But more efficient use of power results in less heat produced and less need for expensive and elaborate cooling systems, Newswise reports.

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.

In 2002, he expanded this research to include systems software that automatically reduces power consumption while maintaining performance.