IBM supercomputers rank as the most energy-efficient systems in the world, according to the latest Supercomputing "Green500 List" announced by Green500.org. The list shows that 18 of the Top 20 most energy-efficient supercomputers are built on IBM high performance computing technology. The list includes supercomputers from Saudi Arabia to Germany and the United States that are being used for a variety of applications such as astronomy, climate prediction and pharmaceutical research. IBM also holds 69 of the Top 100 positions on this list.
IBM's range of supercomputers mentioned in the list includes Blue Gene, Power servers, iDataPlex, BladeCenter and hybrid clusters. "IBM's most energy-efficient supercomputers are based on Cell and POWER processors, which are used throughout our server portfolio," Herb Schultz, deep computing market manager, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "The technology that allows IBM to dominate the list of the most energy-efficient supercomputers can be used by a broad set of IBM clients to address a spectrum of workloads beyond supercomputing. This includes innovative cooling technologies like the Rear Door Heat eXchanger that can help lower power consumption by reducing air-conditioning needs."
The number-one most energy-efficient system in the world-a supercomputer built at the Julich supercomputing center in Germany as part of a collaboration between IBM and an academic consortium of universities and research centers-produces more than 723 Mflops (millions of floating point operations per second) per watt of energy.
The IBM supercomputer at Los Alamos National Laboratories-which first broke through the petaflop barrier and was second on the recently announced Top500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers-is ranked the sixth most energy-efficient supercomputer in the world, capable of over 444 Mflops per watt of energy. A non-IBM supercomputer that topped the Top500 list placed 44th on the Green500 List, producing only 253 Mflops per watt.
The Green500 list is published by Green500.org.