The team from Taiwan’s National Tsing Hua University is on a mission: to become the first university to repeat as Student Cluster Competition champions. While the team this year is almost entirely new, they have the same coach and have been mentored by their predecessors from the 2010 championship team.
They’ve added a new sponsor to the mix this year. Acer returns as their system sponsor, supplying a 72-core Xeon-based cluster, and NVIDIA is jumping on the Taiwan bandwagon with their contribution of six Tesla GPU cards.
Like the other teams driving GPUs, Taiwan’s success is somewhat dependent on how well they’ve adapted the scientific codes to optimize these specialized number-crunching beasts. Or, in the case of non-GPU friendly apps, how well Taiwan can utilize their traditional cluster hardware to handle the loads.
Take a look at the video to get a feel for Team Taiwan. To me, they’re the definition of quiet confidence and competence. Like last year, they never seem to hurry and never show any signs of frustration. As one observer noted, they’re one of the most well-prepared teams in the competition – something that should aid them in their quest to take home another SCC trophy. (There isn’t a real SCC trophy, but there should be.)
Posted In: Latest News, SC 2011 Seattle
Tagged: Student Cluster Competition, National Tsing Hua University, SC 2011, Meet the teams