Towards Efficient Supercomputing: Searching for the Right Efficiency Metric

Abstract

The efficiency of supercomputing has traditionally been in the execution time. In early 2000’s, the concept of total cost of ownership was re-introduced, with the introduction of efficiency measure to include aspects such as energy and space. Yet the supercomputing community has never agreed upon a metric that can cover these aspects altogether and also provide a fair basis for comparison. This paper exam- ines the metrics that have been proposed in the past decade, and proposes a vector-valued metric for efficient supercom- puting. Using this metric, the paper presents a study of where the supercomputing industry has been and how it stands today with respect to efficient supercomputing.