The new BSC machine is Europe’s “greenest” supercomputer

25 June 2018

According to the Green 500 list, which measures the energy efficiency of the world's most powerful supercomputers.

The brand-new Barcelona Supercomputing Center’s POWER9 cluster has emerged as the most "green" machine in Europe, according to the Green500 ranking, which scores the world's fastest supercomputers for its energy efficiency.

The new editions of the Top500 and Green500 rankings have gone public this morning during the SC Supercomputing exhibition, which is taking place in Frankfurt, and is the most important one in Supercomputing in Europe.

In the Green500 ranking, MareNostrum 4 POWER9 cluster, which is a block mainly aimed at Artificial Intelligence that was launched at the end of May, has revealed itself capable of executing 11.865 x 109 floating point operations per watt of consumed energy (11,865 Gigaflops / Watt). This energy efficiency places it at number 9 on the Green500, after six Japanese supercomputers and two North American computers. The general-purpose block of MareNostrum 4 has been placed at position 41.

As regards the results of the Top500 list, which evaluates the supercomputers for their speed in executing the Linpack program, the BSC’s POWER9 cluster has been placed at position 255. MareNostrum 4 general-purpose block, which appears on the list for the third time, occupies position 22.

After many years during which China has led the rankings, the list is headed again by an US Supercomputer, Summit, with the same architecture as MareNostrum 4 POWER 9 cluster and property of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.