Green HPC’s : New-Generation Solution For Decreasing Energy Consumption Of HPC Systems

By: Kriti Aggarwal, Sudhakar Kumar

High performance computing (HPC) evolved as result of growing demand for computational speed, high performance and data storage. HPC puts various technologies like computer architecture, programming and its algorithms and systems software on same platform to address the problem of continuous and efficient development of high-performance computing application [1]. Moreover, due to the integration of parallel computing, HPC provides better and optimized systems that are capable of performing a large number of operations per second. Hence, HPC is considered as a founding stone for various scientific, defense and industrial sectors to solve the complex time-consuming computations. The HPC system share of various applications as per Top500 in November 2020 is shown below in figure 1.

However, in past few years, with the increase in demand for better and high-performance computation systems, the increase in power demand of these supercomputer systems has also increased.

Typically, HPC systems contains multiple computer nodes in order to provide optimum computing power [2]. The aggregation of large number of processors inexorably generates substantial volume of thermal flux. This creates a highly energy intensive environment. This mot only effects the environment but also decreases the lifespan of HPC components. Moreover, power can neither be created nor destroyed and can only be changed from one form to another.

Hence, the designs criteria for future HPC systems are power-limited. The thermal design of   green systems depends totally upon the reducing heat generation and improving cooling infrastructure.

Generally, the metric used for calculating the energy efficiency in high performance systems is “FLOPS per watt”. According to GreenTop500’s November 2020 list for top 10 green computing systems NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD came at first position with power efficiency of 26.195 gigaflops/watt [3]. It is almost double to that of the Shoubu system B, a ZettaScaler-2.2 supercomputer which was the top green computer of November 208, which achieved 17.6 gigaflops/watt power-efficiency [4].

In order to raise awareness performance metrics of the sustainable supercomputers, the Green500 offers supercomputer rank list of every six months in order to boost the determination supercomputing researchers to perform better. Currently, Pratyush-Cray XC40 developed by Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology is the fastest green computer of India with the Green500 ranking of 117 and Top500 ranking 77. Power efficiency of Pratyush is 2.781 GFlops/watts [5].

According to Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), India also plans to install 73 ‘green supercomputers’ to increase power efficiency and speed in the comping years.

References:

1. What is high-performance Computing? Retrieved March 14, 2021, from https://www.techopedia.com/definition/4595/high-performance-computing-hpc
2. https://technative.io/the-future-of-sustainable-hpc/
3. https://www.top500.org/lists/green500/2020/11/
4. https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/high-performance-computing-market
5. November 2020. (2020, November). Retrieved March 15, 2021, from https://www.top500.org/lists/green500/2020/11/

Cite this article:

Kriti Aggarwal, Sudhakar Kumar (2021), Green HPC’s : New-Generation Solution For Decreasing Energy Consumption Of HPC Systems, Insights2Techinfo, pp. 1

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