Supercomputers Going Green?

Supercomputers have become an important asset in atmospheric/climate research: for example, they can run fine-scale regional models such as WRF, GCMs or aid deliver weather forecasting in time.  However, they consume 30 times more electricity than older scientific computers (Grier, 2008). Increased costs in electricity may have a huge impact on smaller climate centers. The question is: are there greener supercomputers?

 In the age of computers, machines are smaller and faster. According to Grier (2008), the big scientific processors used nowadays are 300 times more effiecient (per watt) than were computers 15 years ago. But in spite of using less energy, they are faster and thus, they consume more. However, there is still hope! A new type of supercomputer produced by SiCortex uses a new approach to save energy when processing, as mentioned by Paulson (2008). It was purchased by Purdue University and the US’s Argonne National Laboratory. Purdue is using the SC 5832 in various scientific disciplines including climate research. According to the SiCortex website, the SC5832 offers 5,832 1.4GFlops 64-bit processors (dissipating 900 milliwatts of power per processor). In addition to that, it has 8 Terabytes of system memory and, best of all, it fits in a single cabinet and only needs around 20 kilowatts of wall power.

According to Halvor Utby, System Engineer at the Bergen Center for Computational Science (Norway), power and cooling costs are always considered when buying a new supercomputer. He also added that ”a computer like this one (the SC 5832) would help reduce energy costs... without knowing too much about how this computer performs, my guess from the specs is that it will perform well in climate research... it is hard to say exactly without a benchmark at hand”. Utby also pointed out that, since its clock frequency is lower than in other supercomputers, the job might run longer than on a supercomputer with higher clock frequency; it depends on the scalability of the application.

The SiCortex and industry experts have also developed an index to measure how green supercomputers are: the Green Computing Performance Index (GCPI). It analyzes the computing performance (per kWatt) across industry-standard benchmarks. This iniciative and many others to come  will help boost atmospheric/climate research towards ”greener environments”. Yes, supercomputers can go green!

Grier, D. A. (2008). Click Here to Empty Trash. Computer, 41(9), pp. 6-8.
Paulson, L. D. (2008). Supercomputers Get Energy-Efficient. Computer, 41(9), pp. 19, 20.
SiCortex SC5832 website: http://sicortex.com/products/high_capability_system_sc5832
SiCortex GCPI website: http://sicortex.com/green_index