Question: How much electricity is required to power a supercomputer?

Olivia Lynes answered on 9 Mar 2015:

This is a great question and I had no idea so I looked it up, and after reading the answer I’m very glad it’s not my electricity bill that pays for the computers I use.

It’s not just the power of the supercomputer that is taken into consideration, but also the energy needed to keep them cool- think how warm a normal computer tower gets and multiply that by thousands, rooms that house supercomputers need to have very good aircon!

The worlds fastest supercomputer- the Fujitsu K uses 9.9 million watts and enough electricity to power 10,000 homes.