Evaluating Energy Efficiency in InfiniBand-Based Dell PowerEdge Energy Smart Clusters
Date
:
2/15/2008
Power consumption can have a significant impact on the total cost of ownership of high-performance computing (HPC) clusters. As server performance has increased, so have the power requirements to run those servers — simultaneously increasing both the operational costs of running a cluster and the costs of either cooling it in a large room or maintaining specialized buildings to help prevent system failures. To exacerbate these requirements, typical large-scale HPC environments also require a low-latency, high-bandwidth interconnect such as InfiniBand, which can add to total power consumption.
In addition to incorporating the advanced processors, memory, power and thermal design technology of standard ninth-generation Dell™ PowerEdge™ servers, Dell PowerEdge Energy Smart servers are designed to reduce power use while still providing high performance. To help evaluate the advantages of clusters built with the InfiniBand interconnect and these energy-efficient servers in enterprise environments, in July 2007 Dell engineers used HPC application workloads to measure the power draw, performance and energy efficiency of three eight-node HPC clusters. The results indicate that using the InfiniBand interconnect and PowerEdge Energy Smart servers can help increase energy efficiency without compromising performance.
In addition to incorporating the advanced processors, memory, power and thermal design technology of standard ninth-generation Dell™ PowerEdge™ servers, Dell PowerEdge Energy Smart servers are designed to reduce power use while still providing high performance. To help evaluate the advantages of clusters built with the InfiniBand interconnect and these energy-efficient servers in enterprise environments, in July 2007 Dell engineers used HPC application workloads to measure the power draw, performance and energy efficiency of three eight-node HPC clusters. The results indicate that using the InfiniBand interconnect and PowerEdge Energy Smart servers can help increase energy efficiency without compromising performance.