Using multiple energy gears in MPI programs on a power-scalable cluster

Recently, system architects have built low-power, high-performance clusters, such as Green Destiny. The idea behind these clusters is to improve the energy efficiency of nodes. However, these clusters save power at the expense of performance. Our approach is instead to use high-performance cluster nodes that are frequencyand voltage-scalable; energy can than be saved by scaling down the CPU. Our prior work has examined the costs and benefits of executing an entire application at a single reduced frequency. This paper presents a framework for executing a single application in several frequency-voltage settings. The basic idea is to first divide programs into phases and then execute a series of experiments, with each phase assigned a prescribed frequency. During each experiment, we measure energy consumption and time and then use a heuristic to choose the assignment of frequency to phase for the next experiment. Our results show that significant energy can be saved without an undue ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: PPOPP
• Authors: Vincent W. Freeh, David K. Lowenthal
• Keywords: Clusters Save Power, Distributed And Parallel Computing, Multiple Gear, PPOPP 2005, Single Reduced Frequency