Action: A New Metric for Evaluating the Energy Efficiency on High Performance Computing Platforms (ranked on Green500 List)

Abstract

The need for new and more reliable metrics is always in demand. In this paper, a new metric is proposed for the evaluation of high performance computing platforms in conjunction with their energy consumption. The aim of the new metric is to reliably compare different HPC systems concerning their energy efficiency. The metric provides a mean to rank supercomputers of similar capabilities, avoiding the misleading results of metrics like performance-per-watt, currently used for ranking systems, as in the Green500 list, where systems with totally different sizes and capabilities are ranked consecutively. An example of this misuse for two adjacent systems in the Green500 list, is discussed. A comparative study for the energy efficiency of three high performance computing platforms, with different architectures, using the proposed metric is presented.