Energy efficiency in a supercomputing center: a case study

Abstract

The work presents a case study related to the efficient use of energy in the Supercomputing Centre of Castile and Leon (SCAYLE) in the city of León (Spain). In this case study, the location is important to show how weather conditions and an optimal design based in density and free cooling, among others, allows adequate performance of computing infrastructure in terms of energy efficiency, using computing resources in an environment friendly way, maintaining, at the same time, the overall computing performance. In order to analyse the information, the monitoring systems were used to calculate the indicators of performance related to energy consumption. The conclusions of this study shows that, apart from the design of the Data Processing Centre (DPC) an adequate and continuous control of all the components of the Supercomputer are the key for providing the best performance possible in order to obtain very efficient levels of electricity consumption from the computing infrastructure, compared to the total consumption of the Centre.