A group of six undergraduate students from Barcelona School of Informatics (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - Barcelona Tech) and researchers of BSC involved in the Mont-Blanc project has been selected to take part in the 4th HPCAC-ISC Student Cluster Competition. The competition will take place at ISC 2015 and is an opportunity to showcase student expertise in a friendly yet spirited competition. In real time, a total of 11 teams of undergraduate students will build a small cluster of their own design on the ISC 2015 exhibit floor and race to demonstrate the best performance across a series of benchmarks and applications. The competition will conclude with a ceremony on the main conference stage to recognize participants in front of thousands of HPC luminaries.
The so-called ARMaggedon team, headed by Filippo Mantovani, coordinator of the Mont-Blanc project, will be the first Spanish team to have the opportunity to demonstrate their skills in setting up and administrating an ARM-based HPC cluster within the established power limit of 3000W. They will also demonstrate their skills in optimizing the benchmarks and applications for that specific architecture. “We will be the first team to use the ARM architecture in this competition. We know that it is a challenge but we are eager to demonstrate both our skills and the potential of an ARM-based cluster”, says Luna Backes, a research assistant at Barcelona Supercomputing Center who is heavily involved in the Mont-Blanc project and the leader of the ARMaggedon team.
The ARMaggedon team is formed of the following students: