May 13, 2021 — The first annual Winter Classic Invitational Student Cluster Competition held their closing ceremony on Friday, May 7th, revealing the winning teams and Brueckner Award scholarship recipients. The Winter Classic is the first cluster competition to exclusively feature Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) along with Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs).
Student teams from ten universities worked to run and optimize real world HPC benchmarks and applications on virtual clusters provided by team mentors. The mentors included Google, Intel, Microsoft, Dell Technologies, AMD, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and HPE. Special assistance was provided by the HPC AI Advisory Council, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and HPC consulting firm BioTeam.
University teams included: Claflin University, Florida A&M University, Morehouse College, Prairie View A&M, Tennessee State University, University of California Santa Cruz, University of Houston, the University of the Virgin Islands, and the University of Texas El Paso with two entries.
In addition to first, second, and third place awards for the teams, the competition also gave out six $1,000 Brueckner Award scholarships to the three most outstanding male and female competitors. Special guest presenters Patricia Damkroger, VP of Intel’s Data Center Group, and Brent Gorda, Senior Director for HPC Business at Arm, handing out the scholarships for the female and male winners respectively.
Dr. Happy Sithole, Center Manager for the National Integrated Cyber-Infrastructure at South Africa’s CSIR-NICIS organization, presented the team awards.
Team awards were given to:
- 1st Place & Overall Champion: University of Houston
- 2nd Place: University of Texas, El Paso (Team Itzamna)
- 3rd Place: UC Santa Cruz
- Honorable Mention: combined team of Florida A&M and the University of the Virgin Islands
Teams that won individual benchmark and application workloads were also recognized, they include:
- Highest LINPACK: University of Houston
- Highest HPCG: Florida A&M + University of the Virgin Islands
- Best Score, Gromacs: University of Houston
- Best Score, LAAMPS: University of Houston
- Best Score, NAMD: University of Houston
- Best Score, OpenFOAM: University of Texas El Paso. Team Itzamna
The winners of the Brueckner Award $1,000 scholarships include:
- Jackie Garcia, University of Santa Cruz
- Nazanin Behesthi, University of Houston
- Airam Flores, University of Texas, El Paso
- Aaron Brown, Prairie View A&M
- Christopher Murphy, University of the Virgin Islands
- Suyash Bakshi, University of Houston
The Winter Classic organizers urged potential employers, whether for internships or entry-level full-time jobs, to visit their resume board which features the interests and resumes of nearly all of the competitors.
The organizers also announced that the competition next year will take place in mid to late February and will also be aimed at HBSUs and HSIs. Potential mentor organizations and university participants are encouraged to contact chief organizer, Dan Olds from Intersect360 Research as soon as possible.
Source: Winter Classic Invitational Student Cluster Competition