by jbs071010 j3 — July 12, 2010—On the latest release of The Green500 List, accelerator-based supercomputers now occupy the top eight slots. Accelerators refer to the use of dedicated hardware to perform computations faster than a traditional processor, or central processing unit (CPU).
Green500 explains that the “fuel efficiency” of these accelerator-based supercomputers makes the ones on the Green500 more than three times more energy efficient than their non-accelerated counterparts on the list.
There are two types of accelerator-based supercomputers: one is based on the custom PowerXCell 8i processor from IBM, and the second is based on the commodity graphics processing unit (GPU) from one of two companies, either Advanced Micro Devices’ (AMD) ATI technology or from NVIDIA.
As in the November 2009 list, the former type tops the Green500, with three IBM quantum chromodynamics parallel computing on the cell (QPACE) machines, all tying for first place and all located in Germany.
The Green500’s exploratory Little Green500 List debuted in November 2009 with the intent to further raise awareness by driving energy efficiency as a first-order design constraint on par with performance, or more specifically, speed. This list ranks the energy efficiency of a larger set of supercomputers, where a supercomputer is defined as being as fast as the 500th-ranked supercomputer on the TOP500 List 18 months prior.
The Green500’s exploratory HPCC Green500 List, where HPCC stands for the High-Performance Challenge Benchmarks, was announced in November 2009 and welcomes its first official entry, the Talon supercomputer from Mississippi State University, which is also currently ranked #9 on the Green500 and #331 on the TOP500.
