2005b], A PowerAware Run-Time System for High-Performance Computing

For decades, the high-performance computing (HPC) community has focused on performance, where performance is defined as speed. To achieve better performance per compute node, microproces-sor vendors have not only doubled the number of transistors (and speed) every 18-24 months, but they have also doubled the power densities. Consequently, keeping a large-scale HPC system func-tioning properly requires continual cooling in a large machine room, thus resulting in substantial operational costs. Furthermore, the in-crease in power densities has led (in part) to a decrease in system reliability, thus leading to lost productivity. To address these problems, we propose a power-aware algorithm that automatically and transparently adapts its voltage and frequency settings to achieve significant power reduction and energy savings with minimal impact on performance. Specifically, we leverage a commodity technology called “dynamic voltage and frequency scaling ” to implement our power-aware algorithm in the run-time system of commodity HPC systems. 1