SA team wins international supercomputing conference

[brattex]

I can imagine on that front...

And as long as you keep it as an outreach program rather than a win program I think you will have a good chance of always doing well tbh...

Other countries send their strongest teams and repeat their participation. We pick undergrads, new teams, and also emphasise equal opportunity so we generally don't have experience on our side.

 

[brattex]

Ok, so the goal is to maximize perf for selected benchmarks given a fixed budget. So, they can choose any hardware or software as long as it fits in the budget. Correct?

Do they actually assemble the hardware themselves? (Hook up the cables, install the GPUs, configure the switches, install the OS, drivers, etc.) Or do they just spec out the design and someone else puts it together?

Also, what is meant by designing their software implementation? Do they actually write any software? Or just choose which versions of drivers and libraries to use?

Yes. SA COMP is Rands budget. International is power budget.

Kids get their kit in the original boxes and wrapping. They do _everything_ including packing up at the end again

The software varies. Sometimes they can choose what compiler, can tweak the make file, or even re-engineer code. It's all happened in the past. Little design choices like OS version, network drivers, all the way to the actual code etc. - nothing is enforced but obviously it can all make a difference. Some kids have come with virtual box images, ansible, their own kernels, etc.

 

[brattex]

The CSIR page says that they do a bunch of work up front, the hardware is apparently “submitted to the CHOC’s partners for manufacturing “, for example. I agree that a few days would not be enough to write any useful software, unless this is also something done in advance.

There is a lot of loose terminology, like “design”, “build”, “implement”, “construct”, “optimize”, but nothing which really says what they actually do.

I'm waiting to return a rental car tapping on my phone. I can do better responses later but TLDR they have unlimited choice on the software stack. Some kids going into December (round 2) prepare an entire software stack beforehand, others write scripts, etc.

In Germany they've previously had to write a benchmark suite as a challenge IIRC.

 

[LinuxMan]

Well done!
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