SUNNYVALE, Calif., Dec. 3 – The HPC Advisory Council (HPCAC), a leading organization for high-performance computing research, outreach and education, and the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC), today announced the university teams from around the world for the HPCAC-ISC 2013 Student Cluster Competition during the ISC’13 program of events. University-based teams to compete and demonstrate the incredible capabilities of state-of-the-art HPC systems and applications on the ISC’13 show-floor will be the following: The University of Edinburgh (EPCC) from the United Kingdom, Chemnitz University of Technology and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) from Germany, Costa Rica Institute of Technology (TEC) from Costa Rica, University of Colorado Boulder (CU) from the USA, National Tsing Hua University (NTSU) from Taiwan, a university to be determined in a run-off competition via the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) from South Africa, and two university teams from China who will be determined in a run-off competition via Inspur in early 2013.

In a real-time challenge, the 9 teams of undergraduate students will build a small cluster of their own design on the ISC’13 exhibit floor and race to demonstrate the greatest performance across a series of benchmarks and applications.

“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. “This exciting challenge is an excellent educational opportunity for students around the world to showcase their knowledge and skillsets and to engage with leading commercial vendors. Together, the HPC Advisory Council, ISC team, the sponsors including Inspur, APC and others, and university teams from around the globe, all look forward to this competitive and fun challenge.”

“The HPCAC-ISC Student Cluster Competition is an opportunity to showcase the world’s brightest computer science students’ expertise in a friendly, yet spirited competition,” said Dr. Hans Werner Meuer, ISC General Chair. “We look forward to this very engaging competition at next year’s ISC’13 and wish all the teams good luck.”

Team preparation prior to the competition includes working with supervisors and vendor partners to design and build a winning cluster from commercially available components not exceeding power limit, and to learn the predetermined HPC applications. For more information, sponsorship and general questions please email scc@isc-events.com.

About ISC’13

Now in its 28th year, ISC is the world’s oldest and one of the most important conferences for the HPC community, offering a strong five-day technical program with a wide range of expert speakers and exhibits from leading research centers and vendors. A number of events complement the technical program, including Tutorials, Workshops, Top500 Announcement, Research Paper Sessions, Birds of a Feather (BoF) Sessions, Research Poster Session, Exhibitor and Start-up Forums and the popular "Hot Seat Sessions" featuring leaders from industry and research centers.

ISC’13 is open to IT-decision makers, scientists, members of the HPC global community and other interested parties. The ISC exhibition allows analysts, decision-makers from the automotive, defense, aeronautical, gas & oil, banking and other industries; solution providers, data storage suppliers, distributors, hardware and software manufacturers, the media, scientists and universities to see and learn firsthand about new products, applications and technological advances in the supercomputing industry today.

About the HPC Advisory Council

The HPC Advisory Council’s mission is to bridge the gap between high-performance computing (HPC) use and its potential, bring the beneficial capabilities of HPC to new users for better research, education, innovation and product manufacturing, bring users the expertise needed to operate HPC systems, provide application designers with the tools needed to enable parallel computing, and to strengthen the qualification and integration of HPC system products.

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Source: HPCAC, ISC