The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis
The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis
Workshop: Sustainable Supercomputing
Authors: Adrian Jackson (University of Edinburgh) and Alan Simpson and Andrew Turner (Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC))
Abstract: Large supercomputing facilities are critical to research in many areas that impact on decisions such as how to address the current climate emergency, including renewable energy facility design and new battery technologies. However, these systems themselves are a source of large amounts of emissions due to the embodied emissions associated with their construction and decommissioning; and the power consumption associated with running the facility. Recently, we have been analyzing the impact of a UK national HPC facility (ARCHER2) in terms of energy and emissions. Based on this work, we have made changes to the operation of the service that give a saving of more than 20% in power draw of the computational resources, with all application benchmarks showing reduced power to solution. We describe our analysis and the changes made to the operation of the service to improve its energy efficiency, and thereby reduce its climate impacts.
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