The IndySCC team “FAUltier” is all geared up for SC25!
Each year, the Student Cluster Competition (SCC) invites student teams from all over the world to compete in several tough challenges, all related to high performance computing and computing center operation. The competition takes place during the largest conference for high performance computing, the Supercomputing Conference – this year in St. Louis, Missouri, USA.
Unlike in previous years, our team of motivated and bright students was accepted to compete at the IndySCC, where teams compete remotely using provided hardware in an education-focused experience supported by HPC experts. A 48-hour contest held concurrently with SC is the culmination of experience and knowledge gained by the teams in the preceding months. Therefore, starting with the kickoff event in the first week of August, the team “FAUltier” – despite their name – is already working hard for months by setting up their virtual cluster and running benchmarks on the Jetstream2 system of Indiana University.
Participation in the SCC is part of the “Supercomputer Praktikum” at the Department of Computer Science at FAU. NHR@FAU PhD student Jan Laukemann supports the team together with bachelor student Jonah Holtmann. Six students (starred on the left) will board the plane to St. Louis, Missouri in six weeks and compete on-site against the other international SCC teams at SC25. The competition consists of a months-long preparation phase, the “hero runs”, a 24-hour large-scale benchmarking period in the first week of November, and an intense, 48-hour, non-stop benchmarking and tuning marathon on the SC25 show floor. This year, besides the raw-performance HPC benchmarks, the applications consist of the 2024 Gordon Bell price award winning work Exascale Climate Emulator, the parallel discrete-event simulator Structural Simulation Toolkit (SST), and a mystery application that the students will only learn about during the competition.
The students have been preparing for the competition for an entire semester and are now looking forward to a week of benchmarking until they drop. Many new experiences and being part of the official SC25 Awards Ceremony are guaranteed!