Performance, Efficiency, and Effectiveness of Supercomputers

Abstract

Our primary purpose here is to offer to the general technical and policy audience a perspective on whether the supercomputing community should focus on improving the efficiency of supercomputing systems and their use rather than on building larger and ostensibly more capable systems that are used at low efficiency. After first summarizing our content and defining some necessary terms, we give a concise answer to this question. We then set this in context by characterizing performance of current supercomputing systems on a variety of benchmark problems and actual problems drawn from workloads in the national security, industrial, and scientific context. We also answer some related questions, identify some important technological trends, and offer a perspective on the significance of these trends. We hope by doing so to better equip the reader to evaluate commentary and controversy concerning supercomputing performance.