The 2018 ASC World Supercomputer Contest (ASC18) ended on May 9th at Nanchang University with Tsinghua University successfully defending their championship. ShanghaiTech University, a first-time finalist, won Silver Medal and the e Prize award. National Tsing Hua University won the award for Highest Computing Performance. Russian St. Petersburg National University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and National University of Defense Technology all won awards for Application Innovation.
As one of the world’s top three supercomputing competitions (alongside SC and ISC), the ASC World Supercomputer Contest was founded by the Asian Supercomputing Association and has been held for seven years. The participating teams are required to optimize the performance of the designated applications on their own supercomputing clusters under power constraints. The contest is committed to inspiring the next generation of HPC scientists and engineers to create innovative solutions. It also pays close attention to cutting-edge technology and facilitates communication among HPC communities worldwide. The contest gives awards for ePrize, Highest Computing Performance, and Application Innovation awards in addition to awards for champion and silver medalist.
This year there were more than 300 college students from 165 universities on 6 continents participating in the competition. After an intense two-month competition, 20 teams moved on to the finals, including ShanghaiTech University, Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Zhejiang University, Texas A&M University, and Hong Kong Baptist University etc. The ShanghaiTech University team (GeekPie_HPC) took first place in the preliminary round and is entering the finals for the first time.
ShanghaiTech’s GeekPie_HPC Team members come from the GeekPie_ student community under the guidance of assistance professor Shu Yin (SIST), the engineers Wang Jinlei (SIST) and Zhang Yingdong (Library and Information Technology Center). The team consists of five undergraduates from the SIST. They are the led by Xie Zhiqiang (Class of 2019) and the members Luo Haocong (Class of 2019), Shen Zheqi (Class of 2020), Liu Jianzhong (Class of 2020), Chen Chen (Class of 2020).
During the finals, the GeekPie_HPC Team designed their own high-performance supercomputer system under the precondition of 3000 watt power limit and completed five topics, which are: (1) HPL, HPCG supercomputing benchmark testing and optimization, (2) Answer Predication for Search Query (APSQ) based on CNTK deep learning framework from Microsoft, (3) the redesign and optimization of RELION, the core application of the cryogenic microscopy technology, Nobel Prize 2017, (4) the optimization of CFL3D, a well-known NASA computational software for fluid mechanics, (5) the running, analysis and optimization of the mystery application, Siesta. These topics highly challenged the students’ breadth of perspectives on scientific issues, their depth of thought about designing supercomputer system and their ability to analysis and optimize applications. In the AI reading understanding topic, APSQ, one team member proposed his unique innovations and improvements for the model algorithm and training performance. The team completed the parallel model training of the large-scale data sets within 8 hours and achieved 46.46 high prediction accuracy, almost the most advanced level in the world, earning them the e Prize award, which is given to teams displaying an excellent understanding of supercomputer system and applications as well as the great ability of optimization.
The ShanghaiTech team surprised everyone with their performance in this competition and improved the university’s standing in the international field of high-performance computers. The students were encouraged to implement technologies and to share innovative thoughts with students and experts from around the world in the high-performance computing area, demonstrating the openness and self-confidence of ShanghaiTech students.
The team’s participation received great support from the Library and Information Technology Center’s computing centers and other testing resources, as well as experience-sharing from the architecture design and maintenance of school-level high-performance public service platform, which was helpful in building the testing environment in a short time. They also received technical guidance and hardware and software support from iHuman Institute, the College and other departments, fully embodying ShanghaiTech’s philosophy of integration of science and education, integration of subjects and integration of talent.
GeekPie is a student association of computer science enthusiasts at ShanghaiTech University. GeekPie_ is comprised of the GeekPie_Robotics Team, the GeekPie_FPGA Team, the GeekPie_Information Security Team, and the GeekPie_Cloud Storage in addition to the GeekPie_Operation Teams and the GeekPie_PR Team. GeekPie has won more than 30 awards including ADI UDC Bronze Price and KNOE Hackathon Gold Price and established close collaborations with industries such as Quadcomm, Microsoft, DaoCloud, ADI, Intel, and GE.
