The final round of the ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge 2016 (ASC16) will be held at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan from April 18 to April 22. The 16 finalist teams will compete for the honor of being awarded the Grand Champion, Silver Winner, e-Prize, Highest LINPACK, Application Innovation and Most Popular Team. One by one, the finalist victors will be revealed until there is only one remaining team – the Grand Champion.

Who will be the Grand Champion?

The intense rivalry for the grand championship is always one of the greatest viewing attractions in the ASC Final. Each of the 16 finalist teams has extensive experience and strong capabilities, but the choice of the grand champion remains to be a great source of anticipation. Will a seasoned senior team continue its champion streak, or will a dark horse be crowned? It all depends on their performance at the ASC Finals.

Tsinghua University, National Tsing Hua University, Boston Green Team (Boston University and Northeastern University), and other prestigious organizations have participated in three major global supercomputer competitions including ASC, ISC and SC for years. In the past, these teams have proven themselves as extremely strong contenders in terms of experience and honors. Alternatively, Universidad EAFIT, who is a first-time participant in ASC, showed exceptional performance in SC15 last year and cannot be underestimated. Dalian University of Technology is another university that may become the black horse due to the excellent preliminary results that vaulted them into the final competition. The host university, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, is also a strong contender for the title of Grand Champion, due to their strong performance coupled with favorable climate, geography, and human conditions.

Will the deep learning challenge succeed?

During the ASC16 Finals, 16 teams will face a deep learning challenge. Each participant will have the support of the uniform supercomputer platform and hundreds of thousands of Chinese and English intelligent voice data packages provided by the organizing committee. All teams will have parallel optimization of serial deep neural network algorithm DNN and will try to complete voice identification model optimization training on supercomputers to determine high identification accuracy.

At present, machines require weeks to complete equal voice data learning in serial DNN algorithm. Therefore, which team will complete the challenge with the most speed and accuracy? How is the optimized parallel DNN algorithm faster than serial version? Who will be the winner of the eminent e-Prize Computing Challenge award? After weeks of suspense, the ASC16 Finals will finally reveal these answers.

Will the highest computing performance create a new record?

During the ASC16 Finals, Jack Dongarra, the initiator of LINPACK and TOP500 powerful computer systems in the world, will visit the competition site. As the Chair of the ASC Expert Committee, he will also present awards to some winner teams.

Previously at ASC15, Nanyang Technological University set a new world record with 11.92 trillion/s floating point arithmetic speed under the restriction of 3000W. The possibility of any team in the competition breaking this record is an exciting prospect.

最佳人气奖头花归谁？

Who will win the Most Popular Team Prize?

The Most Popular Team Prize has been established for the first time for the ASC16 final competition. The winner will be two teams with the most Twitter votes and the most WeChat votes, respectively. Hong Kong Baptist University and Beihang University have currently received the top two highest number of WeChat votes. Nanyang Technological University, Universidad EAFIT, and Boston Green Team are currently occupying the top votes on Twitter. The victors of Most Popular Team Prize will be determined in the exciting days ahead.

ASC is sponsored and organized by China. This association is generously supported by Asian, European and American experts and institutions. The main objectives of ASC are to initiate exchange and cultivation of young supercomputer talents across different countries, improve supercomputer application level and R&D capacity, facilitate the driving force of supercomputer, and promote technical and industrial innovation. Over five years of development, ASC has become the largest supercomputer competition in the world and continues to attract thousands of professors, students, supercomputer experts and scholars every year. The ASC16 is jointly organized by the Asia Supercomputer Community, the Inspur Group and Huazhong University of Science and Technology. This year, 175 teams from 148 colleges in the world participated for an opportunity to win the grand championship.