The TOP500.org list is an ordered collection of the 500 most powerful general purpose systems in use today. Rank is determined by the number of floating point operations per second (FLOPS) sustained while solving a dense system of linear equations in the LINPACK benchmark suite. The TOP500.org list is updated every six months.

There is now a Green500.org list ranking machines on the TOP500.org list based on energy efficiency, in FLOPS per Watt. LINPACK makes use of the BLAS (Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms) libraries to perform vector and matrix operations. The three benchmarks that comprise LINPACK were designed for use on vector processors in the 1970s and early 1980s.

If LINPACK is representative of the types of calculations and loads produced by your application suites, then Green500.org ranking may be a valid measure of performance efficiency. If LINPACK loads are not representative of your work, it would be interesting to explore a metric more appropriate to modern hardware and application loads. Perhaps LAPACK-based FLOPS over Watts metric?

(See also: TOP500.org)
(See also: Green500.org)

(See also: LINPACK: Fortran subroutines that analyze and solve linear equations.)
(See also: LINPACK: latest report)
(See also: LAPACK: Linear Algebra PACKage)
(See also: BLAS: Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms)

(See also: EnergyStar.gov)
(See also: GreenerComputing.com)

(See also: IEEE: Green Supercomputing Comes of Age)
(See also: IEEE: The Green500 List – Encouraging Sustainable Supercomputing)

(See also: Honey, I Shrunk the Beowulf)