What Is Computing Efficiency?

What Is Computing Efficiency?

The digital economy is booming and advanced technologies such as 5G, big data, the Internet of Things (IoT), and artificial intelligence (AI) are developing at pace. A range of future-facing applications — from autonomous driving to smart manufacturing and intelligent risk control — have been maturely put into commercial use. All of this means that high computing power and high computing efficiency are now essential to enterprise digital transformation.

The computing efficiency of a data center is defined as the ratio of the data center's computing power to the power consumption of IT and network devices deployed in it, that is, the ratio of computing power generated compared to power consumption per watt, in units of FLOPS/W. The calculation formula is as follows.

Computing power is the capability of servers in a data center to output results after processing data. It is determined by server computing power, storage throughput, and network transmission efficiency. Server computing power can further be classified into general-purpose computing power represented by CPUs and high-performance computing power represented by GPUs.

To improve the computing efficiency of a data center, computing power can be improved or power consumption can be reduced, according to the calculation formula.

How Can We Improve Computing Efficiency?

The computing power calculation model is as follows:

Computing power = f (General computing power, High-performance computing power, Storage capability, Network capability)

To improve general-purpose computing power and high-performance computing power, either add hardware devices or improve the performance of existing hardware. Taking the general-purpose computing power as an example, it can be calculated as follows. This means that the computing power of a data center can be improved by adding CPU servers or improving existing CPU computing power.

Computing power is also dependent on storage capabilities. High-speed storage underpins high-performance computing power, while mass storage accommodates mass data, which is now growing exponentially. Improving storage hardware capabilities is therefore a really effective way of improving the computing power of a data center.

The network capability is also important. Smooth data flows depend on high-quality network services. A data center network with zero packet loss and low latency effectively avoids computing power loss.

Therefore, improving computing power, storage, and network capabilities are all effective ways of improving the computing efficiency of a data center. As the demand for high computing power continues to grow, improving computing efficiency brings direct benefits to enterprises, big and small.