Extracting Practical, Actionable Energy Insights from Supercomputer Telemetry and Logs

Abstract: As supercomputers grow in size and complexity, power efficiency has become a critical challenge, particularly in understanding GPU power consumption within modern HPC workloads. This work addresses this challenge by presenting a data co-analysis approach using system data collected from the Polaris supercomputer at Argonne National Laboratory. We focus on GPU utilization and power demands, navigating the complexities of large-scale, heterogeneous datasets. Our approach, which incorporates data preprocessing, post-processing, and statistical methods, condenses the data volume by 94% while preserving essential insights. Through this analysis, we uncover key opportunities for power optimization, such as reducing high idle power costs, applying power strategies at the job-level, and aligning GPU power allocation with workload demands. Our findings provide actionable insights for energy-efficient computing and offer a practical, reproducible approach for applying existing research to optimize system performance.