Twice a year, the TOP500 project releases a ranking of the most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world. This Green500 list parallels the better-known TOP500 list, which ranks and details the 500 fastest computer systems in the world.
And now for the news of the day. In the most recent Green500 rankings, those for June 2021, the University of Cambridge Wilkes-3 supercomputer, delivered by Dell Technologies, was ranked as #1 in Europe and #3 in the world for energy-efficiency.
This was one of three interconnected Dell Technologies systems at the University of Cambridge that made the Green500 list. Here’s a look at these three systems, known collectively as the Cumulus environment, and their rankings on the Green500 and TOP500 lists.
Cutting Power Use by 40%
The No. 3 ranking for the Wilkes-2 system on the worldwide Green500 list is a huge accomplishment. The team was able to reduce power consumption by a whopping 40 percent and that doesn’t just translate into saving energy. It also translates into saving money — love math like that!
“In the past, we optimized for performance, striving to get that last 1 percent,” says Dr. Oz Parchment, Associate Director of Research Computing Services at the University of Cambridge and the Cambridge Centre for Data-Driven Discovery. “However, now we think about it more holistically. We have hundreds of codes on our machines, so optimizing the performance of one code can impact the others. Optimization has become a multi-dimensional problem. We have a lot of resources that we have to optimize for, including performance, usability and power use. And now performance is just one vector.”
Green a Core Value
Green is a core value at Cambridge University, celebrating three University of Cambridge systems, all based on Dell EMC PowerEdge servers, on the Green500 list. Green is also a core value at Dell Technologies, recognizing the responsibility to protect and enrich our planet together with customers, suppliers and communities. Join the quest to advance sustainability across the enterprise and beyond. And we salute the University of Cambridge for doing just that.
source: Dell
