Collegiate Times

A Virginia Tech supercomputer has recently been named to the inaugural Green500 list. The list, ranking the most energy efficient supercomputers, placed Tech's supercomputer as the 311th most efficient.

The result was very satisfying for Tech professors.

"Generally I'm pretty pleased with our result on the list," said Kirk Cameron, associate professor of computer science.

The Green500 list, created by Cameron and Wu-Chun Feng, associate professor of computer science, has been in the works for several years.

"The idea for this started six years ago, back when people ridiculed me for thinking about size and energy efficiency in regards to supercomputers," Feng said.

Feng noticed a need for energy efficiency while working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

"We had a problem with the supercomputer at the lab because it failed all the time," Feng said. "A lot of the problems we had with the supercomputer were heat related. That's when I realized we needed to focus less on processing power, and more on making the systems more efficient and reliable."

Noticing the problem, Feng worked on developing a supercomputer, Green Destiny, that was more efficient.

"They say that necessity is the mother of invention," Feng said. "The new supercomputer, instead of failing every week or every other week, required no unscheduled maintenance for the 24 months it was in operation."

Though Feng had found success with his computer, the idea of efficient supercomputers was still negatively received.

"When I presented some of my ideas and Green Destiny to audiences, I was getting booed and hissed at," Feng said.

However, the negative criticism did not prevent Feng from continuing his work.

"I gave a talk to an audience that was more open to my ideas, and the idea of the Green500 came about," Feng said. "I sat on the idea for a while, before writing a paper on the subject."

Two years later, the list had gone from idea to reality. The list is unlike anything that has been compiled before.

"(The Green500 list) should be the first of its kind," Cameron said.

Compiling the list took a lot of effort and coordination. To gather the numbers, a Web site was created for groups and institutions to input their data. For supercomputers where energy information wasn't provided, efficiency was measured by making estimates based on peak power usage.

"We received around 200 submissions through the Web site, and the rest of the list was compiled through peak power estimates," Cameron said.

Helping make the list a possibility was the effort of students, who contributed hours to creating and compiling the list.

"I've been involved with the project since last year," said Rong Ge, Ph.D. candidate and student leader for the Green500 list. Finding data for supercomputers without a formal submission took plenty of research.

"We only got a small percentage of the total supercomputer data submitted. We had to find out a lot of the information by researching computer specifications online," Ge said. Following its early November release, the list has received strong feedback from the community.

"People have been very positive about the list. People have been saying that a list like this is needed," Cameron said.

Both Cameron and Feng hoped that with the list comes new attention to energy efficiency.

"We really want to raise energy efficiency awareness. It's silly that we're wasting precious natural resources," Feng said.