sawyl | Cruise ships versus supercomputers

At CUG a few of us tried to determine the environmental impact of a supercomputer versus that of a cruise ship. After a quick bit of work with wikipedia and with the top 500 list, we realised that the cited figure of 80+MW for a cruise liner compared with a maximum of 17MW for the most powerful machine in the world — most are much lower — making it an easy win for the supercomputer.

Today's Guardian, which features a piece on the environmental impact of cruise ships cements the point. Cite the newly commissioned Harmony of the Seas — which features three thrusters all of which have peak power output exceeding that of Tianhe-2 — notes:

According to its owners, Royal Caribbean, each of the Harmony’s three four-storey high 16-cylinder Wärtsilä engines will, at full power, burn 1,377 US gallons of fuel an hour, or about 96,000 gallons a day of some of the most polluting diesel fuel in the world.

...

[M]arine pollution analysts in Germany and Brussels said that such a large ship would probably burn at least 150 tonnes of fuel a day, and emit more sulphur than several million cars, more NO2 gas than all the traffic passing through a medium-sized town and more particulate emissions than thousands of London buses.

According to leading independent German pollution analyst Axel Friedrich, a single large cruise ship will emit over five tonnes of NOX emissions, and 450kg of ultra fine particles a day.

So while it's true that supercomputers use a lot of electricity, it's nothing compared to a large cruise ship...