Beijing, China, Sep. 28, 2020 – The ASC, concerned for the health and safety of all ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge participants during the COVID-19 pandemic, has announced the merger of 2020-2021 ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge. Registration for the ASC20-21 is now open. Undergraduates from all over the world can register at the ASC official website before the November 15, 2020 deadline. Learn more at http://www.asc-events.org/ASC20-21/
ASC20-21 is jointly organized by Asia Supercomputer Community, Southern University of Science and Technology, and Inspur. Each participating team will continue to have one advisor and five undergraduates. The original participating teams of ASC20 can readjust the team members as needed during the reregistration process. Preliminary contest will be held from November 16, 2020 to January 8, 2021. In addition to ASC20’s Quantum Exact Simulation (QuEST), Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications, and HPL benchmarks, there will be new and exciting HPC applications unveiled in the Preliminary Competition Notification in November 2020. Participating teams should submit their proposals following the related procedures. The 20 top teams selected from the preliminaries will participate in the finals at the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China from May 8 to 12, 2021. They will design and build supercomputing clusters, optimize designated applications, and have the results presented in English in front of the jury. The competition will have various prizes including the Champion, Silver Prize, the Highest LINPACK, and e-Prize.
Vangel Bojaxhi, ASC executive director and member of ASC20-21 organizing committee, commented: “The 2020 has been a very unusual year, and the fight against the COVID-19 has presented many new challenges for all mankind. Based on the status of pandemic prevention and control and future prognosis, we have many reasons to believe that the global situation will gradually get better and this pandemic will be fully under control. So, we decided to merge the ASC2020 and ASC2021 Student Supercomputer Challenges and continue with spirit of the ASC supercomputing competition, as part of our effort to create a global platform where young students can get engaged in top-notch scientific innovation and international collaboration, and help to solve major problems concerning humanity by utilizing the power of supercomputing. This new ASC competition for sure will continue to uphold the fortitude of challenging modern-day problems and climb on new peaks of supercomputing and provide to all the participants a global platform for teamwork, and cross-cultural exchanges. We particularly look forward to on-site competition and reunion with all participating team members and advisors in the ASC20-21 arena, as they embark on a new exciting, unforgettable journey.”
The ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge is the world’s largest student supercomputer competition, sponsored and organized by Asia Supercomputer 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 first ASC Supercomputer Challenge was held in 2012 and since has attracted over 8,500 undergraduates from all over the world.
