Energy Efficiency of Personal Computers: A Comparative Analysis

Abstract

The demand for electricity related to Information and Communications Technologies is constantly growing and significantly contributes to the increase in global greenhouse gas emissions. To reduce this harmful growth, it is necessary to address this problem from different perspectives. Among these is changing the computing scale, such as migrating, if possible, algorithms and processes to the most energy efficient resources. In this context, this paper explores the possibility of running scientific and engineering programs on personal computers and compares the obtained power efficiency on these systems with that of mainframe computers and even supercomputers. Anecdotally, this paper also shows how the power efficiency obtained for the same workloads on personal computers is similar to that obtained on supercomputers included in the Green500 ranking.