High-Performance Computing

University Teams To Vie for Supercomputing Championship

• By Michael Hart
• 12/02/14

Eleven university-based teams from around the world will compete against each other this summer to build the best cluster of supercomputers.

The teams were recently announced for the HPCAC-ISC 2015 Student Cluster Competition to be held during the ISC 2015 conference July 13-15 in Frankfurt, Germany. Formerly known at the International Supercomputing Conference, the competition at ISC 2015 will be held in conjunction with the High Performance Computing Advisory Council (HPCAC).

In a real-time challenge, the teams of six undergraduate students each will build clusters of computers that they have designed on the trade show's exhibit floor and attempt to demonstrate the greatest performance with a series of predetermined challenges and benchmarks.

The 11 teams include:

• A combined team of students from Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN, and Universidad EAFIT in Medellin, Colombia;
• Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany;
• University of Hamburg, Germany;
• University of Sao Paolo, Brazil;
• Jamia Millia Islamia, India;
• University of Tartu, Estonia;
• Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Spain;
• University of Science and Technology of China;
• A university in South Africa still to be determined by a competition conducted by the Centre for High Performance Computing; and
• Two more universities from China to be determined by a competition conducted during the Asia Student Cluster Competition early next year.

Teams will prepare in advance of the July competition by consulting with instructors and computer vendors to design and build the computer clusters using guidelines that call for the use of commercially available components not to exceed certain power limits. A predetermined set of high performance computer applications will be required.

"This is an opportunity to showcase the world's brightest computer science students' expertise in a friendly, yet spirited, competition," said ISC Group Managing Director Martin Meuer. "We wish all the teams good luck."