NEWS

GCS is pleased to continue its commitment to supporting young talents in the Student Cluster Competition (SCC), a friendly contest actively shaping the careers of international STEM university students. The competition, running during this year’s International Supercomputing Conference (ISC24), is a chance for enthusiastic students to learn more about high-performance computing (HPC) by introducing them to the industry, HPC systems, machine learning applications, and more.

The German team has been officially invited by the HPC-Advisory-Board to participate in both the online and on-site components of the competition at ISC24, which takes place May 12–16 in Hamburg, Germany. The jury selected 19 virtual and 8 in-person-teams to participate in the 2024 competition.

The competition is divided into two parts. The virtual part, which begins before the conference starts, is already running. In this stage, teams connect to remote clusters and run HPC applications, perform benchmarks, and take part in a series of other skills challenges.

The onsite component begins with the Opening Ceremony on May 13, 2024 at 3:00PM CEST. Throughout the next three days, of competition the teams will bring and assemble their own cluster to run micro-benchmarks and HPC applications.

The German cooperative team consists of students from the Universität Hamburg (UHH) and the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg (OVGU).

Due to the different orientations of the universities, the team members from both universities have different experiences that complement each other. They all have high expectations of taking part in the competition.

For example, Florian Jochens from UHH is currently attending the course, “high performance computing." He looks forward to engaging with the HPC community, gaining insights into current research problems, and conducting hands-on experiments in HPC environments. Aleksey Maleyko from OVGU sees his participation in the Student Cluster Competition as a great opportunity to get hands-on experience working with cluster systems and developing software in the realm of high-performance computing. Jan Tessarz from OVGU is very interested in different kinds of hardware and is aiming to gain more practical experience by participating in the Student Cluster Competition and working with the different clusters there. Caspar Volquardsen from UHH is joining the Student Cluster Competition to apply and deepen his knowledge and experience in a competitive and collaborative environment, while fellow UHH student Kai Metzing values this opportunity to work in a team and learn from and with others while also sharpening his skills in the C programming language and getting an in-depth overview of HPC methods and practices.

"The SCC is always a great experience for the students and for us mentors. Building your own cluster and working with real scientific applications that are used in supercomputing centers around the world is something that otherwise cannot really be experienced in a regular university context," said Michael Blesel, one of the two mentors.

While the students benefit from the experience of the competition, organizations, universities and companies also benefit from the SCC: “Developments in HPC are moving quickly,” said Dr. Claus-Axel Müller, Managing Director of GCS. “We see supporting enthusiastic students are investing in the future of HPC in Germany. These opportunities hopefully motivate students to look closer at career opportunities in HPC and how new, emerging technologies are shaped at our centers.”

The announcement of the winning teams will take place with a live award ceremony at ISC May 15, 2024 5:15PM CEST.

For more information on the Student Cluster Competition please also view the following links:

https://www.isc-hpc.com/student-cluster-competition-2024.html  

https://www.hpcadvisorycouncil.com/events/student-cluster-competition/