The Green500 List: Escapades to Exascale

Scogland, Tom and Subramaniam, Balaji and Feng, Wu-chun (2011) The Green500 List: Escapades to Exascale. Technical Report TR-11-26, Computer Science, Virginia Tech.

Abstract

Energy efficiency is now a top priority. The first four years of the Green500 have seen the importance of en- ergy efficiency in supercomputing grow from an afterthought to the forefront of innovation as we near a point where sys- tems will be forced to stop drawing more power. Even so, the landscape of efficiency in supercomputing continues to shift, with new trends emerging, and unexpected shifts in previous predictions. This paper offers an in-depth analysis of the new and shifting trends in the Green500. In addition, the analysis of- fers early indications of the track we are taking toward exas- cale, and what an exascale machine in 2018 is likely to look like. Lastly, we discuss the new efforts and collaborations toward designing and establishing better metrics, method- ologies and workloads for the measurement and analysis of energy-efficient supercomputing.