Server farm

Many modern supercomputers comprise giant server farms of high-speed processors connected by either Ethernet or custom interconnects such as Infiniband or Myrinet.

Also, for high availability systems that must run 24/7 (unlike supercomputers that can be power-cycled to demand, and also tend to run at much higher utilizations), there is more attention to power-saving features such as variable clock-speed and the ability to turn off both computer parts, processor parts, and entire computers (WoL and virtualization) according to demand without bringing down services.

[8] For this reason, the siting of a server farm can be as important as processor selection in achieving power efficiency.

Iceland, which has a cold climate all year as well as cheap and carbon-neutral geothermal electricity supply, is building its first major server farm hosting site.

Other countries with favorable conditions, such as Canada,[9] Finland,[10] Sweden[11] and Switzerland,[12] are trying to attract cloud computing data centers.