ISC25 Student Cluster Competition: FAUSION Places Third in Hamburg
At the ISC High Performance 2025 in Hamburg, the collaborative team “FAUSION,” a joint effort between students from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) and Università della Svizzera italiana (USI), secured third place in the prestigious Student Cluster Competition.
Under the supervision of master’s student Jonah Holtmann (FAU/USI) and PhD students Aditya Ujeniya (NHR@FAU) and Daniel Vega (USI), the six-member team spent the entire semester preparing for the event. Supported by MEGWARE, who provided powerful hardware consisting of three compute nodes equipped with NVIDIA H200 GPUs, the team was ready for four intense days of benchmarking and application runs.
Challenges ranged from classic HPC benchmarks like LINPACK (HPL) and HPCG to machine learning inference and complex porous media simulations. Throughout the competition, the students demonstrated not only strong technical expertise but also an impressive level of collaboration and creativity in staying within power budgets while optimizing for performance.
Impressions from team FAUSION at the convention in Hamburg, Images: ISC
Ahead of the competition, FAUSION visited MEGWARE‘s headquarters in Chemnitz for a two-day tech deep dive, an opportunity that broadened their understanding of energy-efficient system design and real-world cluster management.
The team included Johannes Dittrich (FAU), Nikita Bloshchanevich (FAU), Christoph Oehlrich (FAU), Alberto Finardi (USI), Georg Meyer (FAU/USI), and Tornike Onoprishvili (USI/LUT), each bringing a diverse mix of academic backgrounds, ranging from computational engineering to HPC-focused master’s programs.
Beyond competition, ISC25 proved to be a hub of global HPC exchange, offering the students invaluable exposure to cutting-edge technologies, inspiring talks, and new international connections. The team is excited to continue working together and hopes to participate in future events.
Congratulations to FAUSION on a fantastic result!