The Reg HPC: Gung-ho Guangzhou college kids smash LINPACK cluster record [ Thu Jun 12 2014]

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*** HPC News ***

Gung-ho Guangzhou college kids smash LINPACK cluster record
Oh snap! Don't TELL me you brought K20s to a K40s party
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/11/college_linpack_record_smashed/

It was the plucky home team from the capital of Guangdong which grabbed
the crown and cash at this year's Asian Supercomputer Conference (ASC)
Student Challenge.

The students from Guangzhou's Sun Yat-sen University screamed happily
when they saw the results from the LINPACK portion of the ASC'14
Student Supercomputer Challenge.

----

HP targets supercomputers with Project Apollo
Box shipper explains why it's plunging hot servers into water-cooled
cages
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/10/hp_project_apollo_hpc_gear/

HP is imprisoning powerful Intel Xeons inside water-cooled cages ...
for science!

The company announced on Monday that it has developed two new classes
of server for high-performance computing workloads as it prepares to go
against traditional supercomputer makers like Cray, Fujitsu, IBM, SGI,
and others for the lucrative high-margin revenues of supercomputer
land.

----

High power computing and awesome Chinese food? Sign me up!
Meet the students doing startling things with their racks in Guangzhou
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/07/china_cluster_warriors_part_4/

Have a look at the last of the 16 teams that competed at the ASC14
Student Cluster Competition in Guangzhou, China.

Team Korea (Ulan Institute of Science & Technology) is a second time
competitor at ASC. As you'd expect, the first student I talk to from
the team is, of course, Spanish. I was wondering if he was actually
with Team Brazil, but no, he's an exchange student studying computer
science in Korea.

----

Young cluster wrestlers find 'hidden' sweet spot
Singapore, Shanghai and a side of Hungarian goulash
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/06/china_cluster_competitors_part_3/

Cluster-wrestling kids are still battling it out at the Asia Student
Supercomputer Challenge (ASC) and Team Shanghai (from Shanghai Jiao
Tong University) is hoping to get lucky their second time around. In
their first outing, the team did OK, but wasn't a big winner. However,
that same team has travelled to Guangzhou and they believe that they
have a much better chance this year.

----

Video: Whatever you do, DON'T BREAK Tianhe-2
Chinese and Russian cluster kids at Student Supercomputer Challenge
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/05/china_cluster_warriors/

It's mostly cluster-building, processor-fumbling fun, but there will
also be a few tenser moments for the teams of students attending the
ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge.

First, there's the competitive aspect... and then there's the fact that
they'll be expected to run code on the 33,862.7 TFlop/s Tianhe-2
supercomputer: only the number one supercomputer in the world.

----

Brazilian whacks fast pipes on racks – and more in our student video
special
We interview cluster newbs fighting for glory
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/04/china_cluster_warriors_take_2/

Welcome to the second batch of video profiles of the sixteen university
teams competing for supercomputing glory at the ASC14 student
cluster-building competition.

China's NUDT (National University of Defense Technology) is another
team that could take home the ASC14 cluster crown and cash. (There's no
real crown, but there is a nice pile of cash waiting for the winning
teams – see here for details. Undergrads basically race against the
clock to build HPC rigs to tackle various apps and benchmarks, with
awards for the best teams.)

----

iVEC seeks testers for petascale powerhouse
Can you break the new Magnus?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/04/ivec_seeks_testers_for_petascale_powerhouse/

As it prepares to ramp up to petascale level, the iVEC supercomputer
facility in Western Australia is looking for early adopters to run its
iron through its paces.

iVEC's current Magnus machine, a Cray XC30 with 104 blades (four nodes
per blade, two 8-core Intel Sandy Bridge processors) comprises a total
of 3,328 cores delivering around 69 TFLOPS. From the start of July, the
facility kicks off a serious upgrade to bring Magnus to the petascale
level.

----

Find a partner? Nah, these students ALL play with same tools in giant
CLUSTER-SHUCK
Asia Student Supercomputer Challenge configs laid out
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/03/chinese_racks_revealed/

One of the major differences between the recently completed Asia
Student Supercomputer Challenge and the other major international
competitions is the way the students get their clustering gear.

In the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) and the SC
competitions, part of the task for students is to find a vendor partner
and work with them to put together the best cluster for the event. Of
course, the next difficult bit is making sure the gear arrives at the
competition site. After that, it's all about getting the cluster
together and operating correctly, which can end up being quite an
adventure in itself.

----


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