Student Cluster Competition

The FAU team at SC18 in Dallas with a HPE employee and their instructor Johannes Hofmann.

Jan, Markus, Benedikt and Lisa (from left to right) from different FAU teams. (Image: FAU/Franziska Sponsel)

FAU teams regularly participate at the Student Cluster Competition , often as the only German team. The student cluster competition is an event organized at three major Supercomputing conferences. University students build their own supercomputers for a live face-off to see whose is the fastest. They’re given real, scientific workloads to run and a power limit they can’t exceed, and the team with the highest-performing system wins. The FAU team students had to attend the Supercomputing Praktikum (SuCoPra) held by Johannes Hofmann and Alexander Ditter from the Chair of Computer Science for preparation. The HPC group at RRZE helps with their expertise in HPC administration, performance engineering and performance tools. The Student Cluster Competition is held at three major annual HPC conferences: Supercomputing (SC, USA), International Supercomputing Conference (ISC, Germany), and Asian Supercomputing Conference (ASC, China). The FAU is ranked second overall in the EMEA leadership board and ninth in the worldwide leadership board as the best European team. Many team students later decide to stick with HPC and choose a bachelor or master thesis or even do their PHD in this interesting field.

Contact Christian Widerspick (mailto:christian.widerspick@fau.de) for more information .

Highest Linpack Award at the ISC 2018 competition. Chief Technologist Nic Dube (HPE), Sales Specialist Patrick Martin (HPE), Alexander Lieret, Christian Zöllner, Alina Öz, Christian Vögl, Tobias Müller and Raphael Mayer (all FAU), and Vice President Bill Mannel (HPE)

FAU teams competed at the following events:

SC 2019, Denver, USA – Team name: deFAUlt
ASC 2019, Dalian, China – First Prize Winner and Group Award Winner! Team name: SegFAUlt
SC 2018, Dallas, USA – Team name: deFAUlt
ISC 2018, Frankfurt, Germany – Winning the Highest LINPACK Award! Team name: danger high FAUltage
ASC 2018, Nanchang, China – First Prize Winner! Team name: SegFAUlt
SC 2017, Denver, USA – Team TUMany segFAUlts. Together with TU Munich.
ISC 2017, Frankfurt, Germany – Winning the Highest LINPACK Award! Team name: FAUboyzz
ASC 2017, Wuxi, China – First Class Prize! Team name: SegFAUlt
SC 2016, Salt Lake City, USA – Team name: SegFAUlt
SC 2014, New Orleans, USA – Team name: Krautcomputing
SC 2013, Denver, USA – Winning overall third place! Team name: Krautcomputing