The world’s largest supercomputing hackathon, ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge (ASC), was launched in Beijing on January 26. The final round of 2016 will be held in Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) on April 18-22 in Wuhan, China. Over a thousand students have signed up for the competition, including teams from Tsinghua University (China), Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US), and Imperial College London (UK).
Huazhong University of Science and Technology is a well-known comprehensive research university in China. It has advanced teaching conditions and faculty in a variety of fields. In supercomputing, it has also built a good discipline basis and a talent pool and has formed several advantageous research directions such as high performance computing, mass memory, and big data platform technology. HUST is one of China’s universities that first incorporated supercomputer-related courses like parallel computing in undergraduate study. Their teams won the Application and Optimization Award in ASC 13 and the Highest Computing Performance Award in ISC13.
Xu Xiaodong, the Vice President of HUST, says, “It is important to hold ASC16 in HUST. We anticipate that co-hosting ASC16 will aid the university and the entire region in building a better environment for supercomputing, in such a way that students could learn more about the latest supercomputing technology. We believe this will help to further promote exchange and collaborations among young talent in China and the world.
The final round of ASC16 will take place in Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics (WNLO) of the university. WNLO is a key laboratory as part of the high-tech industry development “Optics Valley of China”. It is a base camp of innovations and international collaborations in the field of optoelectronics.
Huazhong University of Science and Technology was selected to co-host ASC16 for its comprehensive advantages in different aspects including supercomputing education, competition venue, accommodation facilities, etc. This will be the first time for ASC to take place in Central China.
First initiated and organized in China, ASC has gained support from experts and technology organizations in US, Europe, and Asia. With a goal to inspire more innovative applications in various fields, it has attracted more and more talent to supercomputing and has greatly promoted communications in the High Performance Computing community throughout the world. Within 5 years, ASC has become the world’s largest supercomputing hackathon.