Communications of the ACM
German Research Computer Qpace Is the Most Energy Efficient in the World
Each rack of the QSPACE parallel supercomputer, with 256 processors, 1 terabyte of storage, and 26 double-precision teraflops performance, consumes about 30 kilowatts.
Credit: Julich Research Center
At the recent SC09 supercomputing conference, the QCD Parallel Computing on the Cell (QPACE) was recognized as the world's most energy-efficient supercomputer. QPACE was developed by an academic consortium of universities, research centers, and the German IBM research and development center, led by the University of Regensburg.
The QPACE core team consists of approximately 20 researchers and developers. QPACE is being used to simulate fundamental forces in elementary particle physics, particularly in quantum chromodynamics. The QPACE supercomputer, which is first on the Green500 list, ranks 110 on the Top500 list, with a computing power of 55 teraflops. QPACE features the IBM PowerXCell 8i processor, an enhancement of the Cell/B.E. processor originally developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM for the Sony PlayStation 3 game console. The chips each have nine processor cores, enabling them to execute a large number of calculations simultaneously at a high speed.
Its developers say the QPACE is unique in how it connects processors through a network of field programmable gate arrays to create an efficient, scalable computer.
From Julich Research Center
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Abstracts Copyright © 2009 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA 
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