Current prospects towards energy-efficient top HPC systems

Ever since the start of the green HPC initiative, a new design constriction has appeared on the horizon for the top supercomputer designers. Today’s top HPCs must not only boast with their exascale performances, but must take into account reaching the new exaflops frontiers with as minimum power consumption as possible. The goals of this paper are to present the current status of the top supercomputers from both performance and power consumption points of view. Using the current and available historical information from the Top and Green HPC lists, we identify the most promising design options and how they perform when combined together. The presented results reveal the main challenges that should become the focus of future research.