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Supercomputers get more powerful -- but at a cost
Commentary: Industry cannot afford to ignore pressing energy problems
By Therese Poletti, MarketWatch
Last Update: 12:01 AM ET Nov 17, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- The biggest and fastest computers in the world were dubbed and anointed this week by researchers who compile mind-numbing data for a twice-yearly list, a list closely watched by the players around the world who develop these massive machines.
As usual, much of the attention when the list comes out focuses on which computer makers developed the fastest machines on the Top 500. Another highlight is whether Intel Corp. INTC or Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD have the most chips providing the brain power behind these high-performance computers.
But as these machines -- now measuring speed by the petaflop, or one thousand trillion calculations per second -- reach new computing feats and help achieve major scientific breakthroughs, another issue dogs the industry: Some of these systems require so much electricity that the equivalent could power a small city.
It's a major conundrum for an industry that develops systems used by top scientists for, among other things, predicting global climate change. Other uses include simulating nuclear explosions, testing car designs with simulated accidents, designing new drugs and analyzing genetic sequences to help develop vaccines.
These huge systems can be major polluters, at the same time as they are working to predict or solve serious problems like global warming. Earlier this year, the British press jumped all over the U.K. Meteorological Office (nicknamed the U.K. Met) for ranking as the 103rd worst polluter out of 28,259 public buildings in the United Kingdom, assessed for their carbon footprint. The U.K. Met's massive supercomputer was named as the main cause.
1.2 megawatts
When the U.K. Met's new supercomputer hits its peak performance of one petaflop in 2011, it will require about 1.2 megawatts to run, the same as a small municipality. The U.K. Met Office noted that its system can save lives with its weather forecasts, and that its predictions have helped airlines save 20 million tons of carbon emissions a year.
"You have this dichotomy, the relentless pursuit of computational power, but you cannot have the power consumption growing in lockstep," said David Turek, vice president of deep computing at International Business Machines Corp. IBM
The irony at the U.K. Met Office at least brought some renewed attention to an industry problem that will only get worse as the quest continues to solve even greater scientific problems and crunch trillions more calculations per second.
IBM has been focusing on developing its supercomputers to use less power since it created its record-breaking Blue Gene system in 1999, designing the machines from the ground up to use less energy. At least the high-performance computing industry now has a Green 500 list. In June, 18 of the 20 greenest supercomputers were made by Big Blue.
"The whole business of power and cooling has become a really important issue," said Steve Conway, an analyst at market research firm IDC. He pointed out that the dynamics in supercomputing are much different than in the standard corporate data center -- where companies are now using a whole host of techniques, such as server consolidation and virtualization software to save on power usage.
"High-performance computing is very different," according to Conway. "[Supercomputer users] just want as much computing power as possible. So if you are saving money on energy, you just buy more computing power."
Supercomputer users are not exactly tree-huggers. "There are all sorts of strange implications," the analyst said. "If you see these computers go where power is readily available and affordable, and scientists want to work on the best computers, you could see a brain migration to those parts of the country or the world that have the power available."
Design with power
That is already going on. Google Inc. GOOG and Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, for example, are locating their biggest data centers in the Pacific Northwest, near abundant sources of hydroelectric power. At least one U.S. scientist is moving to Saudi Arabia, where an IBM supercomputer at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology ranked No. 14 on the Top 500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers last June.
At the industry's big conference, called SC09, which started on Sunday in Portland, Ore., there were sessions devoted to the power issue. One paper, to be presented Thursday by Michael Wehner of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, will describe a radically new approach to high-performance computing design, as electricity demands approach hard limits. His ideas leverage design principles from consumer electronics. Laboratory)
But the industry needs to become more collaborative and focus on building systems with power consumption in mind from the very beginning. The newest No. 1 machine on the Top 500 list -- Cray Inc.'s CRAY Jaguar at Oak Ridge National Laboratory -- clocked in with peak performance of 1.759 petaflops, besting IBM's Roadrunner, which fell to No. 2. Yet the Jaguar was No. 90 on the Green 500 in June. Its "green" ranking could change, though, since the machine now uses new AMD chips.
"The power issue is quite profound and it's not going to go away," IBM's Turek said. "Who is going to buy a nuclear power plant to run their computer?"
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