Emissions and energy efficiency on large-scale high performance computing facilities: ARCHER2 UK national supercomputing service case study

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the energy consumption and emissions of the ARCHER2 supercomputing facility, implementing operational changes that reduced power usage by over 20%, thereby decreasing its climate impact.

Contribution

It presents a case study on improving energy efficiency and reducing emissions in a large-scale supercomputing facility through operational adjustments.

Findings

Over 20% reduction in power draw achieved

All application benchmarks showed reduced power to solution

Operational changes led to significant climate impact mitigation

Abstract

Large supercomputing facilities are critical to research in many areas that impact on decisions such as how to address the current climate emergency. For example, climate modelling, renewable energy facility design and new battery technologies. However, these systems themselves are a source of large amounts of emissions due to the embodied emissions associated with their construction, transport, and decommissioning; and the power consumption associated with running the facility. Recently, the UK National Supercomputing Service, ARCHER2, has been analysing the impact of the facility in terms of energy and emissions. Based on this work, we have made changes to the operation of the service that give a cumulative saving of more than 20% in power draw of the computational resources with all application benchmarks showing reduced power to solution. In this paper, we describe our analysis and the changes made to the operation of the service to improve its energy efficiency, and thereby reduce its climate impacts.