• #4255 (no title)
  • Clemson University
  • job-dashboard
  • Jobs & Internships
    • Candidate Dashboard
    • Submit Your Resume
    • View Resumes
  • Look Up an Event
  • Lookup Team
    • Adlai Stevenson High School
    • Arizona State University Profile
    • Beihang University
    • Boston University Profile
    • Chemnitz University of Technology Profile
    • Chinese University of Hong Kong Profile
    • CHPC Team Profile
    • Costa Rican Institute of Technology
    • Dalian University of Technology Profile
    • Dresden University Profile
    • EAFIT University Profile
    • Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre
    • ETH Zurich Profile
    • Federal University of Parana Profile
    • Florida A & M University Profile
    • Friedrich Alexander Universitat Profile
    • Fuzhou University Profile
    • Georgia Institute of Technology Profile
    • Hong Kong Baptist University Profile
    • Hong Kong Polytechnic University Profile
    • Huazhong Agricultural University
    • Huazhong University of Science & Technology
    • Illinois Institute of Technology Profile
    • Indiana University Profile
    • Jamia Millia Islama University Profile
    • Jinan University Profile
    • Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Profile
    • Kasetsart University Profile
    • King Abdulaziz University Profile
    • Laney College Profile
    • Louisiana State University
    • Maine South High School Profile
    • Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology Profile
    • Monash University Profile
    • Nanchang University Profile
    • Nanyang Technological University Profile
    • National Cheng Kung University Profile
    • National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center
    • National Tsing Hua University Profile
    • National University of Defense Technology Profile
    • National University of Singapore
    • Nizhny Novgorod National University
    • North Carolina State University Profile
    • Northeastern University
    • Northeastern University Profile
    • Northwestern Polytechnic University Profile
    • Ocean University of China
    • Pawsey Supercomputing Centre Profile
    • Peking University Profile
    • PLA Information Engineering University Profile
    • Purdue University Profile
    • Qinghai University Profile
    • Saint Petersburg State University Profile
    • San Diego State University Profile
    • Shanghai Jaio Tong University Profile
    • ShanghaiTech University Profile
    • Shanxi University Profile
    • Southeast University Profile
    • Southern University of Science & Technology Profile
    • Stony Brook University Profile
    • Sun Yat-Sen University Profile
    • Sungkyunkwan University Profile
    • SW Oklahoma State Profile
    • Taiyuan University of Technology Profile
    • Team Tennessee Profile
    • Technical University of Munich Profile
    • Telkom University Profile
    • Texas A & M University Profile
    • Texas State University Profile
    • Texas Tech University Profile
    • The Chinese University of Hong Kong Profile
    • Tsinghua University Profile
    • Ulsan National Institute of Science & Technology Profile
    • Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya Profile
    • University of Alberta Profile
    • University of Colorado Profile
    • University of Electronic Science & Technology Profile
    • University of Hamburg Profile
    • University of Heidelberg Profile
    • University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
    • University of Massachusetts Profile
    • University of Miskolc Profile
    • University of Oklahoma Profile
    • University of Sao Paulo Profile
    • University of Science & Technology of China Profile
    • University of Tartu Profile
    • University of Tennessee Profile
    • University of Texas – Austin Profile
    • University of the Pacific Profile
    • University of Utah Profile
    • University of Warsaw Profile
    • University of Washington Profile
    • Ural Federal University Profile
    • Vilnius University
    • Wake Forest University Profile
    • Weifang University Profile
    • William Henry Harrison High School Profile
    • Zhejiang University Profile
  • post-a-job
  • University of California San Diego
  • Vendor Honor Roll
  • Blogs
  • Follow
  • About
Student Cluster Comp.Com

Students, Supercomputing, Competition? Who doesn't love it?

Menu

  • Latest News
  • Lookup Team
  • Look Up Event
    • SC 2019 Denver
    • ASC 2020 Shenzhen
    • ASC 2020
    • ISC 2020
    • ISC 2019 Frankfurt
    • ASC 2019 Dalian
    • SC 2018 Dallas
    • ISC 2018 Frankfurt
    • ASC 2018 Nanchang
    • SC 2017 Denver
    • ISC 2017 Frankfurt
    • ASC 2017 Wuxi
    • SC 2016 Salt Lake City
    • ISC 2016 Frankfurt
    • ASC 2016 Wuhan
    • SC 2015 Austin
    • ISC 2015 Frankfurt
    • ASC 2015 Taiyuan
    • SC 2014 New Orleans
    • ISC 2014 Leipzig
    • ASC 2014 Guangzhou
    • SC 2013 Denver
    • ISC 2013 Leipzig
    • ASC 2013 Shanghai
    • SC 2012 Salt Lake City
    • ISC 2012 Hamburg
    • ASC 2012 Beijing
    • SC 2011 Seattle
    • SC 2010 New Orleans
    • SC 2009 Portland
    • SC 2008 Austin
    • SC 2007 Reno
  • Regional/Other Competitions
  • Job Board & Resumes
  • Vendor Honor Roll
  • Tips, Tricks & History
  • About

Mystery Apps Can’t Stump ISC’16 Cluster Kids

June 29, 2016 · Dan Olds

Event logoOne of the most interesting parts of the ISC Student Cluster competitions is their inclusion of “mystery” applications and tasks. These are challenges that the students can’t prepare for. They can only rely on their training and wits to bring them through.

For the 2016 ISC competition, Pak Lui, the Cluster Master in Chief (CMC) came up with a couple of incredibly difficult mystery tasks. (Pak is also known as “The Man who puts the ‘Pak’ into LINPACK” and “The Packmaster.”)

The task this year was to run two applications (WRF and Cloverleaf) so that they had the lowest peak power possible, but could still finish the application run within one wall clock hour. The winner would be the team with the lowest peak power spike who completed the data set processing in 60 minutes or less.

The teams were allowed to change their hardware to suit the tasks: reducing the size of their machines, disabling accelerators, and the like. They also had the ability to add hardware if they so desired, but no one did. Pak allowed the teams to see the datasets early so they could figure out just how little hardware they’d need to run it in the allotted time.

During the prep period, teams were busily working to figure out the just how little compute power was necessary to get the apps done in 60 minutes. They already had some experience with WRF, but Cloverleaf was a new application to all of them and needed to be profiled.

Some of the student calculations on power and time to completion were right on the money. Let’s take a look at the results on the mystery apps.

With WRF, if a team did well on it during the competition, they also scored well on it as a mystery application. In fact, the order of finish in the chart mimics how the teams finished on the main competition version of the WRF challenge (as you’ll see in the next article in this series). Team USTC came close to perfection on WRF, with Teams Tsinghua and South Africa coming in second and third.

Take a look at what Team Hamburg did on Cloverleaf. They nailed it to the wall, notching a score of 100 per cent on the task, leaving South Africa in second place and third-placed USTC deep in the dust.

This is a noteworthy win because, as mentioned above, none of the teams knew this app was coming. This means that Team Hamburg had to figure out the application and how it would run on their machine in a very limited amount of time. Kudos to them.

In our next ISC article, we’ll wrap things up with a look at who won what and why. Stay tuned.

Posted In: Latest News, ISC 2016 Frankfurt
Tagged: supercomputing, Student Cluster Competition, apps, WRF, ISC'16, Cloverleaf, Pak Lui, ISC 2016

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent Posts

  • New Cluster Competition Announced!!
  • Cluster Comp Coach Chat
  • Meet the ISC20 Cluster Teams – Then Bet on Them!
  • Countdown to the SC Cluster Competition

    weeks
    -2
    -2
    days
    0
    -3
    hours
    0
    -5
    minutes
    -3
    -6
    seconds
    -1
    -7
  • © 2020 Gabriel Consulting Group, Inc.
  • Not an official representative of any supercomputing conference or organization. Just the cheering section.
  • Twitter