In my view, there were only winners at the SC10 Student Cluster Competition this year. In fact, a good portion of the student participants already have job offers.
While the University of Texas at Austin students came in second overall, they did win the HPL (High Performance Linpack) benchmark award and were the first team ever to achieve a Teraflop with only 26 amps of power.
“Six months ago, the students didn’t have any experience in HPC and were overwhelmed by the magnitude of the project, but they’ve come a long way and shown a lot of enthusiasm,” said their mentor, Byoung-Do Kim. “They quickly learned what they needed to master and worked as a team throughout the project. We’re looking forward to competing again next year and keeping the Texas pride high at SC’11.”
The TACC/Dell Student Cluster team finished 2nd overall & won the Highest Linpack Award at SC’10. The team broke the one teraflop mark for the first time in the history of the competition by achieving 1.07 teraflops while remaining below the power consumption limit of 26 amps. Left to right, back row: Steve Sofhauser (Dell), Vladimir Coxall, Loren Micheloni, Jason Kilman. Left to right, front row: Alex Heinzmann, Bethany Barrientos, Phillip Verheyden Byoung-Do (B.D.) Kim (TACC), Carlos Rosales (TACC), John Cazes (TACC), Christine Fronczak (Dell).
“We were the first team in the competition’s history to break a teraflop under the 26 Amp limit,” said Phillip Verheyden, the team captain and a student majoring in computer science. “It’s a testament to our tireless work in power testing and optimizing the benchmarks. Going from zero knowledge to second place in an international competition showed our dedication and our abilities, but was also highlighted all the support we received from our advisers in the process.”
We at insideHPC would like to congratulate the overall winning students from Taiwan’s National Tsing Hua University. Great job, guys!
