IBM Next-Gen Supercomputer Tops Green500
IBM's prototype Blue Gene Q earned the top slot on the list for most energy-efficient HPC systems in the world.
By
Ainsley Jones | Nov 19, 2010
While it is not the most powerful supercomputer, IBM's Blue Gene Q prototype topped the Green500 list, which recognizes the systems with the best performance-per-watt, Data Center Knowledge reports.
China's Tianhe-1A, which recently surplanted the U.S.'s Cray X-T5 on the Top500 list to become the world's most powerful supercomputer, placed 10th on the Green500 list. It's arguable that this is the year of the accelerator, according to Green500 co-founder Wu Feng. Eight of the top 10 systems are accelerator-based supercomputers, reports HPCwire. According to Feng:
Accelerator-based supercomputers on the Green500 List produce an average efficiency of 573 megaflops/watts, whereas the other measured supercomputers on the list produce only an average efficiency of 206 megaflops/watts. That makes the accelerator-based supercomputers on the Green500 nearly three times more energy efficient than their non-accelerated counterparts.
