The Green Lists
The inaugural Green500 list was announced on November 15, 2008 at SC|08. As a complement to the TOP500, the unveiling of the Green500 ushered in a new era where supercomputers can be compared by performance-per-watt.
While the selection of any power-performance metric will be controversial, we currently opt for "FLOPS-per-Watt" given that it has already become a widely used metric in the community and for reasons outlined in, Making a Case for a Green500 List, which was presented at the 2nd IEEE IPDPS Workshop on High-Performance, Power-Aware Computing, April 2006. FLOPS is reported from a LINPACK run while watts is the measured power consumption (on average) during a middle portion of the LINPACK run. If a measured power number is not reported, a derived power number is used. Since the measured power will be less than either the derived power or peak power, it is advantageous to make a formal Green500 submission with measured numbers. For additional details on how to measure the power consumption, please see the Green500 run rules here.
At SC|09, the Green500 announced the creation of three new lists -- Little, Open, and HPCC -- as companions to the Green500 list. While the Green500 list will continue to be the official rankings, these new lists allow us to explore new metrics based on community input.
The Green500 List
The Green500 list, ranks the top 500 supercomputers in the world by energy efficiency. The focus of performance-at-any-cost computer operations has led to the emergence of supercomputers that consume vast amounts of electrical power and produce so much heat that large cooling facilities must be constructed to ensure proper performance. To address this trend, the Green500 list puts a premium on energy-efficient performance for sustainable supercomputing.
- November 2011
- June 2011
- November 2010
- June 2010
- November 2009
- June 2009
- November 2008
- June 2008
- February 2008
- November 2007
You may print certificates for these lists here.
Little List (beta)
Noting that there are more than 500 supercomputers worldwide, the Little List (beta) broadens the definition of a supercomputer to help guide purchasing decisions for smaller institutions. To be eligible for the Little List (beta), a supercomputer must be as "fast" as the 500th ranked supercomputer on the TOP500 list 18-months prior to the release of the Little Green500 (beta).
You may print certificates for these lists here.
Submit your computer Have your own green supercomputer that should be on our rankings?
