A student supercomputing team from Tsinghua University successfully defended its crown at the SC21 Student Cluster Competition (SCC) on November 19. The competition was originally arranged to be held in the United States along with SC21 conference, but changed to online due to COVID-19.

It was the fourth consecutive time that the team from Tsinghua University won the title in the competition series since its establishment in 2012. It is also the team's fifteenth victory in all of the top three worldwide SCC events, which also include the ASC held in China and the ISC held in Germany.

The participating team from Tsinghua University was composed of 6 undergraduate students. In the competition, they need to run several applications, like LINPACK, Cardioid, Quantum EXPRESSO, etc., correctly and efficiently on a cluster. Instead of allowing all participating teams to bring their own machines, the organizing committee provided the attending teams with virtual machines this year due to the pandemic. The teams were expected to choose from available cloud resources and build their own computing cluster within a budget of US $1,500.

The change of the competition rules required participating teams to scientifically manage their resources and make execution plans.

The Tsinghua team came up with two plans that were designed to ensure it could complete the contest under different circumstances with a high score.

The team won the overall winner in the SC21 SCC, competing for consecutive 46 hours in all.

Zhai Jidong and Han Wentao, the team’s advisors, stressed the importance of training new members in the team.

Sophomore students at Tsinghua University with an enthusiasm for supercomputing were organized to take part in regular training sessions and other relevant activities. Meanwhile, the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Tsinghua University opened related courses to help backup members of the SCC team lay a solid foundation. After going through a period of systematic training, outstanding students became active members in the team.

Many former members of the SCC team at Tsinghua University have persisted in sharing their professional knowledge and experience with high-level contests, even after their departure.

In addition, the advisors encouraged their students to take part in three international student cluster competition in a move to further consolidate their professional knowledge, psychological strength and overall competence.

Han said the competition also require the teams to make introductory posters, write research reports and attend interviews, which is a very good training procedure to enhance students' competence and skills.

Editor: Li Han