The total facility is one of the most energy-efficiency data centres in the world
- Paul Calleja
One of the world’s greenest supercomputers has been unveiled by the High Performance Computing Service at the University of Cambridge.
Named “Wilkes”, after the Cambridge pioneer Maurice Wilkes, who built one of the first ever programmable computers in 1949, the new system has been rated second in the “Green 500” – a ranking of the most efficient supercomputers worldwide. It is, however, the most efficient air-cooled supercomputer in the world today (the first-placed machine used an oil-cooled system instead), making it the greenest machine of its kind.
Designed and built by the in-house engineering team within the Cambridge High Performance Computing Service, Wilkes’ energy efficiency is 3,361 Mega-flops per watt. “Flops” (floating point operations per second) are a standard measure of computing performance. Dr Paul Calleja, Director of the Cambridge High Performance Computing Service, said: “Energy-efficiency is the biggest single challenge in supercomputing today and our new system makes an important step forward in this regard.” -
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Image: Dishes close-up. One of the supercomputer’s first roles will be as a test bed for the development of a computing platform for the Square Kilometre Array - an international effort to build the world’s largest telescope.
Credit: SKA Organisation/Swinburne Astronomy Productions
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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