The fifth edition of Wu Feng and Virginia Tech’s Green500 list shows a growth trend of efficiency for the latest large-scale machines. According to one of the Green500 founders, we’ve increased our supercomputing energy efficiency by 10 percent. This increase translates to 10 megaflops/watt improvement over the previous average of 98 megaflops/watt.
The average energy efficiency of the top supercomputers in the world increased by 10 percent,” said Wu Feng, associate professor in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech.
While the supercomputers on the Green500 are collectively consuming more power, they are using the power more efficiently than before,” Feng added.
Maximum energy efficiency remained the same with three 500-megaflops/watt machines falling off the list.
The three supercomputers that occupied the No. 2 spot on the November 2008 Green500 are no longer computationally powerful enough to be considered among the TOP500 supercomputers in the world, and hence, they dropped off the Green500 List. This occurrence thus provides further fuel to the argument for a ‘more inclusive’ Green500,” Feng said. “If the trend of performance doubling continues, the No. 1 machine on this Green500 is unlikely to make the November 2009 Green500 List.”
The statistics are very interesting. For more info, read the full writeup here.
It’s good to know that while technology improves we are also finding new ways to make sure we utilize energy resources better than before. But were the machines that were dropped not open for modifications so that they can process energy better and still stay on the list?