On April 14th, the finalists list for the 2015 ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge (ASC15) has been released in Beijing. 16 teams from U.S. ,China, Europe and other countries and regions are qualified for the finals.
The 16 teams include: Tsinghua University ,Shanghai Jiao tong University, Taiyuan University of Technology , The Chinese University of Hong Kong, National Tsing Hua University ,Massachusetts Green Team (MIT, Boston University, Northeastern University, U.S.), Nanyang Technology Institute, University of Miskolc, Ural Federal University, Kasetsart University and so on.
ASC is one of the largest supercomputing competitions in the world. There are 152 teams of 135 universities from 6 different continents that have joined in the ASC15, with an increase of 85% to those of ASC14. A lot of top universities like Tsinghua University, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Nanyang Technology Institute, MIT have taken part in. ASC15 also have some universities of good reputation in certain countries and regions including Universidad de São Paulo, Leiden University, Tokyo Institute of Technology, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and so on. From the popularity of ASC initiated by China, we can clearly see that it has been becoming an acknowledged event that popularize the supercomputing across China and even the world.
The questions of ASC15 final round has been just posted up along with the finalists list. In the questions, Gridding, the data processing software for SKA has been chosen to be the question for ‘e Prize Award’. That means that those 16 teams will try the most complex application optimization case of SKA. As the largest “big data” program in the world, the data produced by SKA every year could be up to 3000 PB, 30 times to that of Google. If the gridding can be optimized , it will not only speed up the scientific research for universal origins as well as dark matter , but also reduce the cost of supercomputing and energy consumption in this program.
ASC challenge is founded by China and many international supercomputing scientists in 2012. And ASC aims to promote the supercomputing talents’ communication and cultivation, to advance the supercomputing application and developing ability, and to promote the scientific and industrial innovation.