A Path To Energy Efficient HPC Datacenters
HPC Wire, October 29, 2013Energy efficiency is rapidly becoming a key factor for many modern high-performance computing (HPC) datacenters. It poses various challenges, which need to be addressed holistically and in an integrated manner, covering the HPC system environment (system hardware and system software), the hosting facility and infrastructure (cooling technologies, energy re-use, power supply chain, etc.), and applications (algorithms, performance metrics, etc.).
Most of the management schemes present in current HPC datacenters do not allow data to be shared between the HPC system environment, hosting facility, and infrastructure. But, it is important to collect and correlate data from all aspects of the datacenter in order to: better understand the interactions between different components of the datacenter; spot the improvement possibilities; and assess any introduced improvements. There are currently no tools that support a complete collection and correlation of energy efficiency relevant data, allowing for a unified view of energy consumption present in the datacenter.