Asia Student Supercomputer Challenge

Sun Yat-sen University representative team ranked fourth in the first Asia Student Supercomputer Challenge
Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Computational Science and Network and Information Technology Center
 

April 19, 2013, through three-day intensive competition, the first Asia Student Supercomputer Challenge (ASC13) finally came to an end in Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Sun Yat-sun University representative team ranked fourth among ten finalists, and became the best team in the molecular dynamics application. Tsinghua University, National Tsinghua University and Huazhong University of Science and Technology gained the top three. The top two in mainland China will participate the ISC student cluster competition which will be held in German in June, 2013.

 

      Our participating team was mainly formed by Professor Yusehng Xu’s research group in the School of Mathematics and Computational Science and the Network and Information Technology Center, led by four advisors, Zhang Yong-dong, Guan Wei-hao, Fan Zhu-jun, and Ye Wei-cai (post-doctoral). Six participating students are: Zhi Mei-peng, Liang De-peng, Zhang Liang-fu (School of Mathematics and Computational Science), Chen Zhou-rong, Chen Zhao (School of Software), and Chen Bing-wei (School of Information and Technology Science). This team started to prepare for the competition from mid-February, with the help of super computing platform in the campus and the “Southern One” GPU cluster supported by the Computational Science Innovative Research Team and Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Computational Science. Before the team went to the competition, Professor Yuesheng Xu convened a pep rally to the students and encouraged them to perform well in the competition. Gratifying, through great efforts made by all team members, Sun Yat-sen University representative team ultimately get the fourth place of Asia, the third place of mainland China in ASC13, which is one place forward compared to the fourth place of the first Chinese College Student Supercomputer Challenge in 2012.

 

      There are 10 out of 43 teams competed in the finals, including The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, King Abdulaziz University, National Tsing Hua University, National University of Defense Technology, Shanghai Jiaotong University, University of ST. Petersburg, Sun Yat-Sen University, Tsing Hua University, and Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (the list is sorted in alphabetical order). In the finals, each team was asked to design a supercomputer system under a upper limit of power of 3000 watts, and run four specified applications in fields including fluid dynamic, molecular dynamic, weather forecasting, and option pricing, to test the operational capability and the optimization ability of the designed supercomputer system. In addition, each team had to present their result and strategies to the judges on site in English, bringing them with higher challenges in supercomputer application ability.

      Asia Student Supercomputer Challenge (ASC) is one of the world’s three international student cluster competitions. The other two are SC in the United States and ISC in German. ASC is proposed by China, with the sponsor from INSPUR, getting support from more than a dozen Asia countries and regions. The purpose of this competition is to promote training, study, and application of supercomputing in Asia. ASC will inspire students’ interest in supercomputing. Sun Yat-sen university’s active participating will play a positive role in promoting cultivation of supercomputer talent, popularity of supercomputing application, and construction of Guangzhou Supercomputer Center.