Christmann Informationstechnik + Medien GmbH & Co. KG, based in Ilsede (Lower Saxony), won the 2012 GreenIT Best Practice Award in the "Energy Efficient IT Systems" category for the extraordinarily energy-efficient RECS® cluster. This year’s award was organised by Germany’s environment minister, Peter Altmaier. This super-computer also came first in several categories in the Student Cluster Challenge at the 2012 International Supercomputing Conference, where the company provided the hardware for a Karlsruhe-based team of students. This project has now been recognised for its innovation in the area of energy efficiency.

This year marked the third time that the Green IT Best Practice Award has been awarded. The award is given to companies and institutions that play a leading role in improving the energy efficiency of information and communication technology. The awards are organised by GreenIT-BB, a network of representatives from the fields of science, administration and business. A panel of experts decides on the award winners. The competition focuses on operating data centres in a resource- and energy-efficient way because of the significant potential for reduced costs and CO2 emissions. 28 companies in three different categories were nominated for this year’s GreenIT Best Practice Award. The awards ceremony was held at the GreenIT Summit on 26 November at Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz.

Lower Saxony-based IT manufacturer Christmann Informationstechnik won the “Energy efficient IT systems - Green IT" category with an energy efficiency project that had already performed exceptionally well at another competition.

Team “Cluster” from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (K.I.T.) came top in the “Best CPU Cluster” (with no graphics card support) category and also won the fan favourite award in the Student Cluster Challenge at the 2012 International Supercomputing Conference in Hamburg. Christmann’s hardware and support helped them beat out international teams from China and the USA.

The computer was specially configured for the Cluster Challenge, where It had to perform a variety of operations and run specialised programs (such as for calculating molecular dynamics or ocean currents) without consuming more than 3 kilowatts.
Christmann’s RECS® computer was the top-placed CPU cluster with its outstanding performance in the LINPACK speed test. The six students from KIT teased 2,400 gigaflops out of the computer while using just 3 KW. This remarkable energy efficiency also impressed the jury for the GreenIT Best Practice Award. Samsung, Intel, Supermicro, Mellanox, Enermax, Lehmann and Fraunhofer ITWM also sponsored the KIT team and provided hardware for the computer. Samsung’s low voltage Green DDR3 and SSD played a particularly important role in the team’s success.



“We are very pleased to support Christmann Informationstechnik with our Green DDR3 and SSD, which offers most optimized solution that excels in both performance and energy efficiency,” said Yunshik Kim, president of Samsung Semiconductor Europe. “Samsung will keep providing the leading-edge solution with ultra-efficient Memory technology to contribute further innovation in High Performance Computing environment.”

“Our objective is to combine optimal performance with the best possible resource efficiency,” said CEO Wolfgang Christmann. “We have started installing this system for some major German customers. This shows that we are on the right path with high performance computing and cloud infrastructures in these challenging times."

Christmann Informationstechnik is honored that its years of energy efficiency research have been honoured with such a prize. This further motivates the company to continue improving efficiency in future.  

Source: GreenIT Best Practice Award 2012