# Investigating Supercomputer Performance with Sustainability in the Era of Artificial Intelligence
## 6 Conclusions and Future Research  
In this era of AI, the race toward faster and more energy-efficient supercomputers has brought critical challenges, especially in balancing computational performance with sustainability. This article has comprehensively examined the interplay between top 10 highest performance systems and EE of top 10 EER supercomputers over a period of five years, providing rare longitudinal insight into the trade-offs that define modern HPC. The findings reveal that while performance has increased rapidly, EE has not kept pace at the same rate, revealing a persistent challenge between maintaining performance and sustainability. Through comparative analyses of the TOP500 and Green500 rankings, the study shows that supercomputers with the top performance typically operate at significant power costs, with core counts in the millions and power demands reaching tens of megawatts. However, the most energy-efficient supercomputers tend to be smaller in scale, highlighting a structural limitation in current HPC architecture. Notably, a few exceptional supercomputers like Frontier, LUMI, and MareNostrum demonstrated the rare capability to appear in the top 10 of both rankings, signaling that it is feasible to achieve a balance between top performance and energy efficiency, though this balance is difficult to maintain. As AI continues to evolve rapidly and increase global energy demands, the sustainability of supercomputing infrastructures becomes a critical concern. The projected increase in carbon emissions from AI-powered data centers shows the need for green innovation in hardware design, cooling systems, and renewable energy integration. This study recommends a paradigm shift to a situation where performance metrics are evaluated not only in terms of FLOPS, but also through the lens of ecological responsibility and long-term sustainability. This research can provide policymakers, researchers, and technologists with foundational evidence for rethinking supercomputing in the era of AI. As the HPC community and industries prepare for the next phase of supercomputing, which is zettascale computing, there is an urgent need to ensure that the future of HPC not only emphasizes high performance but also is greener and more sustainable. It can be interesting for researchers to quantify the carbon footprint of the top-performing supercomputers over study periods. The study suggests  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l c c c} \hline
**TP vs. EP** & \(\mathbf{r}\) & **TP vs. EP** & \(\mathbf{r}\) \\ \hline June24 TP vs. June24 EP & \(-\)0.481 & Nov22 TP vs. June22 EP & 0.224 \\ Nov24 TP vs. Nov24 EP & \(-\)0.289 & June22 TP vs. Nov22 EP & 0.224 \\ Nov24 TP vs. June24 EP & \(-\)0.42 & June21 TP vs. June21 EP & \(-\)0.21 \\ June24 TP vs. Nov24 EP & \(-\)0.271 & Nov21 TP vs. Nov21 EP & \(-\)0.199 \\ June23 TP vs. June23 EP & \(-\)0.23 & Nov21 TP vs. June21 EP & \(-\)0.218 \\ Nov23 TP vs. Nov23 EP & \(-\)0.35 & June21 TP vs. Nov21 EP & \(-\)0.197 \\ Nov23 TP vs. June23 EP & \(-\)0.216 & June20 TP vs. June20 EP & \(-\)0.302 \\ June23 TP vs. Nov23 EP & \(-\)0.281 & Nov20 TP vs. Nov20 EP & \(-\)0.265 \\ June22 TP vs. June22 EP & 0.232 & Nov20 TP vs. June20 EP & \(-\)0.305 \\ Nov22 TP vs. Nov22 EP & \(-\)0.224 & June20 TP vs. Nov20 EP & \(-\)0.25 \\ \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 7: Performance (Rmax) analysis for top-performing (TP) and most energy-efficient (EP) supercomputers.  
similar research should be conducted in the future using data from Graph500. The effects of architectures or cooling technologies of different supercomputers (e.g., CPUs vs. GPUs) on energy and performance can be studied in the future.  
This research was funded by the Deanship of Research and Innovation at the University of Hafr Al Batin through project number 0164-1446-S.  
Not applicable.  
Home-I TOP500: [[https://www.top500.org/](https://www.top500.org/)]([https://www.top500.org/](https://www.top500.org/)) (accessed on 12 December 2024).  
The author declares that there are no conflicts of interest.