November 15-20, 2015, Austin, Texas

State of the Practice: Measuring Systems

Date: Thursday, November 19, 2015, 02:00 PM - 02:30 PM

Room: 18AB

Type: Paper

Description: The last decade has seen power consumption move from an afterthought to the foremost design constraint of new supercomputers. Measuring the power of a supercomputer can be a daunting proposition and, as a result, many published measurements are extrapolated. This paper explores the validity of these extrapolations in the context of inter-node power variability and power variations over time within a run. We characterize power variability across nodes in systems at eight supercomputer centers across the globe. Based on these, we find that the current requirement for measurements submitted to the Green500 and others is insufficient, allowing variations of as much as 20\% from time of measurement and a further 10-15\% from insufficient sample sizes. This paper proposes new measurement requirements to ensure consistent accuracy for power and energy measurements of supercomputers, some of which have been accepted for use by the Green500 and Top500.

Links: Official link from SC15

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