Team South Africa has taken second prize in the prestigious International Student Cluster Competition, which was held at the International Supercomputing Conference in Frankfurt, Germany. The results were announced on 21 June 2017, following three days of immense hard work by 12 international teams.

The Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) trains computer science and engineering students from various South African universities in its annual winter school held every July. Some students are selected for the National Student Cluster Competition that takes place during the CHPC’s National Conference every December. Winners of the national competition are entered into the annual International Student Cluster Competition that takes place in Germany. South Africa is always represented by a new team of six undergraduate students who travel to Germany to build a small cluster of their own design on the International Supercomputing Conference exhibition floor and race to demonstrate the greatest performance across a series of benchmarks and applications. Students receive a unique opportunity to learn, experience and demonstrate how high-performance computing influences our world and day-to-day learning.

The international competition is organised by the international High Performance Computing Advisory Council and this year’s competing teams were:

• Centre for High Performance Computing (South Africa)
• Nanyang Technological University (Singapore)
• Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre, University of Edinburgh (United Kingdom)
• University of Science and Technology and National University of Defense Tech (China)
• Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen–Nürnberg (Germany)
• University of Hamburg (Germany)
• National Energy Research Scientific Computing Centre (United States of America)
• Universitat Politècnica De Catalunya Barcelona Tech (Spain)
• Purdue University  and Northeastern University (Unites States of America)
• The Boston Green Team (Boston University, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Massachusetts – Boston (United States of America)
• Beihang University (China)
• Tsinghua University (China)

Tsinghua University took the overall prize based on their Linpack score and their performance in the ‘mystery challenge’.  Team South Africa was represented by Mishka Mohamed, Kyle Jordaan, Tyrone de Ruiters, Liam Doult, all from University of the Western Cape, as well as Phillip Goosen and Lydia de Lange from Stellenbosch University. The team members were honoured guests of the Minister of Science and Technology, Mrs Naledi Pandor, at the Department of Science and Technology’s Budget Vote in parliament this year where she wished them well for the international competition. South Africa has previously won the international competition three times and taken second position once. Asked on what the magic formula is, David Macleod, CHPC Engineer and team’s advisor simply said: “We have good sponsors and we come prepared.”

This year’s team was sponsored by DellEMC for hardware equipment to the value of R2 million and Mellanox was the sponsor for network equipment worth R200 000.

ENDS

For more information, please contact Tendani Tsedu, CSIR Group Manager: Strategic communications, on 012 841 3417/082 945 1980 or email mtsedu@csir.co.za