Episode 2 of the Green HPC podcast series

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Green HPC Podcast logo In this series we are examining the issues that datacenter managers and system designers are facing with high performance computing systems of all sizes today. Even if you aren’t “green at heart,” there are very practical and compelling reasons why a growing awareness of energy use in your datacenter — how much, where it goes, and what it costs you — is critical to your success.

In the second episode of this exclusive podcast series, we start off by hearing from Pat Tiernan of the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. The EPA’s estimates of all energy use for information and communications technology in the US is only about 1.5% of the nation’s total consumption — Tiernan explains why that small number is big enough to matter today, and he talks about the regulatory inevitabilities that are going to make energy use in computing a big deal tomorrow.

Listen to Episode 2 and meet the guests

Pete Beckman of Argonne National Laboratory’s Leadership Computing Facility gives us his response to my challenge that, if IT’s 1.5% slice of the total energy use pie is small, HPC’s slice is minuscule and should be under everyone’s radar. Beckman argues against that point of view, and points toward the technology trickle down that will multiply investments in green HPC into IT in general.

Next up are Steve Cumings and Ed Turkel of HP, a company that figures prominently in both the enterprise and supercomputing markets, about the differences in the motivations and behaviors of the two sets of customers and why the green technologies they each adopt tend to be very different.

Despite the very practical motivations HPC practitioners have for managing and reducing energy use, adoption in our community has been slow. This episode of the series closes out with Microsoft’s Christian Belady talking about the factors that will accelerate the adoption of green technologies in our community.

Listen to Green HPC Episode 2: IT, HPC, and where the twain shall meet, get speaker bios and links related to their comments, and more at the Green HPC Episode 2 page. Or visit the Green HPC Podcast Series home page to learn more about the entire series.