November 2008

This 4th edition of the Green500 List contains a plethora of interesting takeaways, of which the following are notable accomplishments in the awareness of green supercomputing.

1. The 500MFlops/Watt barrier is surpassed.
   • Four new IBM QS22 systems take over the top four spots on the Green500. Cell-based systems, comprising the top 7 spots, are pacing the energy-efficient supercomputing community with an increase in energy efficiency of 17% over the last edition released in June.
2. Over 50% of the top supercomputers are now reporting their energy usage.
   • In this edition, 276 of the top 500 sites reported their power usage along with their performance, marking an 19.5% increase over the last release. Further, this increase in reporting encompasses 18% more hardware manufacturers, a benefit to HEC users evaluating future purchases with energy-efficiency in mind.

Listed below are the Green500's Top 10 most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world as of November 2008. Please see the sidebar above for the complete November 2008 Green500 list in both online and offline viewing formats.

As actual consumed power can be much less than peak power, we explicitly note which form of power was used to rank the system and encourage all system stakeholders to report measured power -- systems where peak power is used are shown in "gray", while systems where measured power is used are shown in "black".