High-Performance Computing | News

Teams Selected for Student Cluster Competition

• By Leila Meyer
• 12/04/13

The HPC Advisory Council (HPCAC) and the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) have selected teams for the HPCAC-ISC 2014 Student Cluster Competition, which will take place in Leipzig, Germany in June 2014.

The 11 competing universities include:

• Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), South Korea;
• A combined team of students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Bentley University and Northeastern University (NEU), United States;
• The University of Edinburgh (EPCC), United Kingdom;
• Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany;
• University of Hamburg, Germany;
• University of São Paulo, Brazil;
• University of Colorado Boulder, United States;
• A university to be determined in a run-off competition via the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC), South Africa;
• University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), China; and
• Two additional university teams from China to be determined in a run-off competition via Inspur in early 2014.

The teams of undergraduate students will compete in a real-time challenge to "build a small cluster of their own design on the ISC'14 exhibit floor and race to demonstrate the greatest performance across a series of benchmarks and applications," according to information from HPCAC and ISC. In preparation for the competition, team members will work with supervisors and vendor partners to design and build a high-performance computing cluster from commercially available components and to learn the HPC applications required for the competition.

"The HPCAC-ISC Student Cluster Competition is designed to introduce the next generation of students to the international high-performance computing community," said Gilad Shainer, chairman of the HPC Advisory Council, in a prepared statement.

More than 20 universities applied for acceptance into the competition, but only 11 were selected. "We hope to be able to host more universities in future competitions," said Shainer.

Further information about the ISC'14 Student Cluster Competition can be found on the HPC Advisory Council's site, and a video of the 2013 competition can be found on YouTube.