Performance, Efficiency, and Effectiveness of Supercomputers

Technical Report · Thu Dec 01 04:00:00 EST 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1505370· OSTI ID:1505370

Our primary purpose here is to offer to the general technical and policy audience a perspective on whether the supercomputing community should focus on improving the efficiency of supercomputing systems and their use rather than on building larger and ostensibly more capable systems that are used at low efficiency. After first summarizing our content and defining some necessary terms, we give a concise answer to this question. We then set this in context by characterizing performance of current supercomputing systems on a variety of benchmark problems and actual problems drawn from workloads in the national security, industrial, and scientific context. We also answer some related questions, identify some important technological trends, and offer a perspective on the significance of these trends. We hope by doing so to better equip the reader to evaluate commentary and controversy concerning supercomputing performance.

• Research Organization: Sandia National Laboratories (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
• DOE Contract Number: AC04-94AL85000
• OSTI ID: 1505370
• Report Number(s): SAND2016--12782; 650025
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING