{"id":81049,"date":"2013-06-26T10:04:18","date_gmt":"2013-06-26T08:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=81049"},"modified":"2013-06-26T10:05:38","modified_gmt":"2013-06-26T08:05:38","slug":"sa-supercomputer-champs-how-they-did-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/81049-sa-supercomputer-champs-how-they-did-it.html","title":{"rendered":"SA Supercomputer Champs: how they did it"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The South African team that recently won the overall championship at the <abbr title=\"International Supercomputing Conference\">ISC<\/abbr>\u201913 Student Cluster Challenge in Leipzig did so with an 8-node supercomputer, according to a video interview with the students.<\/p>\n<p>Despite only receiving their equipment a day after arriving at the show, the South African contenders achieved the highest aggregate points total and walked away with top honours.<\/p>\n<p>InsideHPC <a href=\"http:\/\/insidehpc.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">reported that the key to winning the day<\/a> was the fact that Team South Africa used graphics processing units (GPUs) to accelerate three of their benchmark applications.<\/p>\n<p>No other team was able to do this, according to InsideHPC.<\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"http:\/\/studentclustercomp.com\/?p=1416\" target=\"_blank\">report on the Student Cluster Competition blog<\/a> also said that the South African team was one of only two teams to have completed every task.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QZecH6u3t4U\" height=\"338\" width=\"600\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">The road to supercomputing victory<\/h3>\n<p>Team South Africa was assembled by the <abbr title=\"Council for Scientific and Industrial Research\">CSIR<\/abbr>&#8216;s Centre for High Performance Computing (<a title=\"CHPC\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/539355-Centre-for-High-Performance-Computing-CHPC\">CHPC<\/a>) after holding a national competition in December 2012.<\/p>\n<p>In the video interview above, the team members explain that by winning the local competition, Evelyn Khoboka (<abbr title=\"North-West University\">NWU<\/abbr>), Kerren Ortlepp (Wits), Jan-Willem Steeb (Wits), and Ryan Strange (Wits) became the first four members of the CHPC\u2019s Leipzig team.<\/p>\n<p>Katlego Moukangwe (UCT) and Muhammad Atif (Wits), were chosen from among the other contenders to fill out the CHPC team, while Eugene Botma (<abbr title=\"University of the Free State\">UFS<\/abbr>) and Abednigo Masilo (Wits) made up the reserve bench.<\/p>\n<p>While Atif and Moukangwe\u2019s teams did not win the CHPC\u2019s Student Cluster Challenge in 2012, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chpc.ac.za\" target=\"_blank\">according to the CHPC website<\/a> their teams did win sub-categories. Atif\u2019s team won the prize for Best LINPACK performance, while Moukangwe\u2019s team won Best theoretical peak performance.<\/p>\n<p>After CHPC put together the national team, <a title=\"Dell\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/354710-Dell\">Dell<\/a> flew the winners to the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at its headquarters in Austin, Texas.<\/p>\n<p>In a newsletter reporting about the visit to TACC, Dell wrote that the students asked several questions about accelerators such as the <a title=\"Intel\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/307489-Intel\">Intel<\/a> Xeon Phi co-processor, how it differs from graphics processing units (GPUs), and which type of co-processor would work better for the cluster challenge.<\/p>\n<p>The students also asked more specific questions about managing the power consumption of the co-processor, TACC said.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement published on the CHPC\u2019s website earlier this year, the CSIR said that the students presented their design for the IPC\u201913 Student Cluster Challenge to the team at Dell\u2019s TACC at the end of their week-long trip to Texas.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Dell team concluded that the students created a good design for their cluster and that fine tuning should be done via hands-on testing,\u201d the CHPC wrote.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_81051\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-81051\" class=\"size-full wp-image-81051\" alt=\"SA ITC13 supercomputer champs - Katlego Moukangwe, Jan-Willem Steeb, Kerren Ortlepp, Ryan Strange, Evelyn Khoboka, Muhammad Atif\" src=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/SA-ITC13-supercomputer-champs-Katlego-Moukangwe-Jan-Willem-Steeb-Kerren-Ortlepp-Ryan-Strange-Evelyn-Khoboka-Muhammad-Atif.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/SA-ITC13-supercomputer-champs-Katlego-Moukangwe-Jan-Willem-Steeb-Kerren-Ortlepp-Ryan-Strange-Evelyn-Khoboka-Muhammad-Atif.jpg 600w, https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/SA-ITC13-supercomputer-champs-Katlego-Moukangwe-Jan-Willem-Steeb-Kerren-Ortlepp-Ryan-Strange-Evelyn-Khoboka-Muhammad-Atif-250x166.jpg 250w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-81051\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">From left to right: Katlego Moukangwe, Jan-Willem Steeb, Kerren Ortlepp, Ryan Strange, Evelyn Khoboka, Muhammad Atif<\/p><\/div>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Cluster Configuration<\/h3>\n<p>With kit sponsored from Dell, the CHPC team from South Africa used the following setup for its championship supercomputer, according to the Student Cluster Challenge blog:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>8x Dell PowerEdge R320\/R720 servers;<\/li>\n<li>Dual Xeon E5\u20132660 processors in each server, for a total of 128 CPU cores;<\/li>\n<li>512GB of memory (64GB per node);<\/li>\n<li>8x Nvidia K20 cards; and<\/li>\n<li>a Mellanox FDR Infiniband interconnect.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The blog post also noted that while some teams used Intel Phi co-processors as accelerators, Team South Africa opted for GPUs from <a title=\"Nvidia\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/361596-Nvidia\">Nvidia<\/a> instead.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9wB6i5zBui0\" height=\"338\" width=\"601\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>To win, South Africa had to get the highest aggregate score, 10% of which came from the High Performance Computing Challenge benchmark suite which includes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>HPL (Linpack TPP),<\/li>\n<li>DGEMM,<\/li>\n<li>STREAM,<\/li>\n<li>PTRANS,<\/li>\n<li>RandomAccess,<\/li>\n<li>FFT, and<\/li>\n<li>communications bandwidth and latency.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The next 50% of the score came from running the following applications:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>GROMACS,<\/li>\n<li>MILC,<\/li>\n<li>WRF,<\/li>\n<li>Two secret applications announced to competitors at the event.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The remaining 40% of the aggregate score comes from an interview with the judges, which Team South Africa \u201caced\u201d, according to the CHPC.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"related\">More on supercomputers<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/hardware\/80723-holy-petaflops-sa-students-are-supercomputing-champions.html\"><strong>Holy petaflops! SA students are supercomputing champions<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/hardware\/80449-chinese-supercomputer-now-the-worlds-fastest.html\"><strong>Chinese supercomputer now the world\u2019s fastest<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/general\/74016-sa-scientist-to-build-digital-human-brain.html\"><strong>SA scientist to build digital human brain<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/hardware\/70374-ibm-watson-supercomputer-to-fight-cancer.html\"><strong>IBM Watson supercomputer to fight cancer<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/general\/64528-worlds-fastest-supercomputer-emerges.html\">Cray XK7 \u201cTitan\u201d \u2013\u00a0formerly the fastest supercomputer<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Team South Africa won the recent Student Cluster Challenge using an 8-node cluster with Dell-sponsored equipment<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":80725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[20119,20103,20101,225,20117,20105,35,20095,20097,20093,20109,20113,20107,20115,20111,20099],"class_list":["post-81049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-abednigo-masilo","tag-centre-for-high-performance-computing-chpc","tag-council-for-scientific-and-industrial-research-csir","tag-dell","tag-eugene-botma","tag-evelyn-khoboka","tag-headline","tag-high-performance-computing-hpc","tag-hpc-advisory-council","tag-international-supercomputing-conference-isc","tag-jan-willem-steeb","tag-katlego-moukangwe","tag-kerren-ortlepp","tag-muhammad-atif","tag-ryan-strange","tag-student-cluster-challenge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81049"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81049"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81083,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81049\/revisions\/81083"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}