Green Supercomputing Comes of Age

Energy-efficient (green) supercomputing has traditionally been viewed as passe, even to the point of public ridicule. But today, it's finally coming into vogue. This article describes the authors' view of this evolution. Ignoring power consumption as a design constraint will result in supercomputing systems with high operational costs and diminished reliability. Fortunately, improving energy efficiency in supercomputers (and computer systems in general) has become an emergent task for the IT industry. Hopefully, this article inspires further innovations and breakthroughs by providing a historical perspective. From Green Destiny to BG/L to innovative power-aware supercomputing prototypes, we envision that holistic power-aware technologies will be available and largely exploited in most, if not all, future supercomputing systems.