Denver, CO, USA, November 18, 2019 – ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge 2020 (ASC20) announced the opening of registration. Undergraduates around the world can now register at the official website (https://www.asc-events.org/ASC20/) to participate in the world’s largest and most competitive supercomputer hackathon. The deadline for registration is January 5, 2020.

The excitement brought by cutting-edge science and the world’s top thought-provoking projects are becoming a unique part of the ASC competition, attracting thousands of young people from all over the world. The Asia Supercomputing Community (ASC) competition covers High Performance Computing and Artificial Intelligence, encompassing world-class scientific computing applications, such as: GRIDDING – the most complex computational process of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), MASNUM – the Gordon Bell Award-nominated application, RELION –  a critical application for the 2017 Nobel Prize-winning cryo-electron microscopy technology, and Artificial Intelligence applications in intelligent voice, intelligent traffic prediction, natural-language reading comprehension, and image super-resolution (SR). The competition’s tasks are always designed to help college students understand the latest HPC technologies and stimulate their imaginations and creativity, while testing and improving their abilities in supercomputer innovations.

The ASC competition is the first and the only international competition of its kind to introduce the world’s top supercomputer as a competition platform. For example, ASC17 used Sunway TaihuLight, the world’s fastest supercomputer at that year. Engaging the world’s fastest supercomputer to challenge cutting-edge scientific applications became one of the unforgettable experiences for many participating students and greatly stimulated their enthusiasm for technological innovation. “I can definitely say that participating in the ASC Challenge has changed my life,” said Marcin Mielniczuk from the University of Warsaw, “It’s a very unique experience to compete on the Sunway TaihuLight.”

“The ASC competition has become the world’s most fascinating supercomputing competition for college students, attracting more than 1,000 young people from different cultures all over the world every year and allowing them to grow fast through a fierce competition,” remarked Vangel Bojaxhi, Executive Director of ASC. “This effectively promotes academic and talent exchanges across borders and further facilitates the cultivation of HPC&AI talents around the world.”

In fact, the role of ASC competition in the cultivation of top supercomputing talents has been recognized by more and more universities and regarded as an important supplement to undergraduate education. Also, ASC experience has become a highly valued item for admission applications to many world-renowned universities. “This allows all students to add a bright touch to their resumes,” said Alexander Ditter, the advisor of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg team, “as not too many college students can claim to have received allocations and run workloads on the world’s fastest supercomputers.”

“I have participated in the world’s major supercomputer competitions for college students. Compared with similar competitions, ASC is by far the most intense one,” said Jack Dongarra, the Chair of ASC Advisory Committee, and Distinguished Professor at the University of Tennessee, USA. “ASC is very meaningful for the development of supercomputing, since it is very likely to influence the future direction of students and guide their career development.”

Furthermore, the ASC20 will hold its first briefing session during the International Conference for High Performance Computing 2019 (SC19) on November 21. The host of the competition, as well as details on the competition system and schedule, will be announced at that time. At the same time, universities from all over the world may also register for the competition at the scene.

About ASC

The ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge is the world’s largest student supercomputer competition, sponsored and organized by Asia Supercomputing Community in China and supported by Asian, European, and American experts and institutions. The main objectives of ASC are to encourage exchange and training of young supercomputing talent from different countries, improve supercomputing applications and R&D capacity, boost the development of supercomputing, and promote technical and industrial innovation. The annual ASC Supercomputer Challenge was first held in 2012 and has since attracted over 7,000 undergraduates from all over the world. Learn more ASC at https://www.asc-events.org/