From green supercomputing to the International Green Computing Conference
While outside in my neck of the Northeast green lawns have turned brown (except where homeowners’ automated sprinklers work overtime), it seems everywhere I turn at work things are greener than ever.
IDG News Service reports that chip makes are reading the components needed to build dual-core smartphones designed to handle more demanding apps without resorting to single-chip development techniques that would be less energy efficient than going with a dual-core design.
Both multicore processors and mobile devices are among the topics at the ongoing International Green Computing Conference in Chicago this week. This is a gathering of experts on making computers more energy efficient. Sessions focus on everything from cloud computing to data centers to embedded systems. Lennart Johnsson, a University of Houston professor and champion of green computing, gave the keynote address. He recently worked with AMD and Supermicro to develop an energy-efficient Supermicro blade for high-performance computers.
Separately, Virginia Tech has been awarded $2 million by the NSF under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to build a supercomputer with the best name ever: HokieSpeed.
Wu Feng, principal investigator on the grant, is also creator of the Green500 List, a ranking of the most energy efficient supercomputers in the world.
Feng described HokieSpeed — to be built using CPUs and GPUs — as expected to deliver 35 times better peak performance, 70 times better peak power efficiency, and 14 times better peak space efficiency than System X, once the fastest academic supercomputer in the world.
