SiCortex Launches Green Supercomputer Benchmark

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MAYNARD, Mass. -- Supercomputers -- the ones that are doing everything from advanced weather and climate modeling to complex research in physics and mathematics -- are energy-suckers on a level almost inconceivable to owners and managers of typical data centers.

And although one set of benchmarks exists for High Performance Computers, the Massachusetts-based SiCortex yesterday announced that it had developed a new, vendor neutral standard for measuring just how green HPCs are.

SiCortex's Green Computing Performance Index looks at the 23 key benchmarks in the HPC space, and allows vendors and buyers to compare performance rates for the computers most relevant to any given data center's type of work.

This is actually the best place to start, because these are the computers that suck up the most energy," explained Chris Stone, SiCortex's CEO, in an interview with GreenerComputing. "They are the ones that are just eating the data center alive. In the large labs like Lawrence Livermore or Argonne, these are the largest energy using computers around."

In talking about the general lack of green benchmarks for data centers and high performance computers, Stone said, "[The GCPI] would in essence be the first measure of how green a computer really is; manufacturers could then apply it to laptops or any other kind of computer."

There is one benchmark for HPCs already: a year ago marked the publication of the first-ever Green500 list for supercomputers. Stone said that his company has already tested the theory behind the GCPI with the group that puts out the Green500 list.

In a press release announcing the GCPI, SiCortex quotes Dr. Wu-Chun Feng of Virginia Tech, the founder of the Green500 list, as saying "The Green500 calls attention to the issue of power consumption by ranking the energy efficiency of the 500 fastest computers in the world. However, the Green500 will need to evolve to offer a broader view of performance considerations than the current Linpack-based list."

Stone says manufacturers or owners of HPCs can participate by running the full HPCC benchmark suite and posting results on the HPCC Challenge website, and then weighing in on HPC power consumption discussions on the GCPI blog.

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