WASHINGTON — Virginia Tech engineers will rank the top 500 supercomputers in the world based on energy efficiency, the university said Wednesday

(Nov. 7).

The impetus for the "Green500 List" to be launched this month are reports that power and cooling requirments for supercomputers is fast approaching spending for new servers in data centers.

"The purpose of the Green500 List will be to provide a ranking of the most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world, and hopefully, shift the focus of supercomputer design to adopt a more energy-efficient and power-efficient approach," the university said in a statement.

 

"Vendors and system architects take significant pride and expend enormous effort to make the Top500 List" of supercomputers, said Virginia Tech computer science associate professor Wu Feng. "That results in exponential increases in supercomputing performance, but at a price: The power consumed by a single supercomputer today may cost millions annually and rivals the amount consumed by small cities."