Student Cluster Competition

*** About the team picture, as we have a member from another country and could not manage to take a picture with him, we hope that we can use the picture that will be taken at the competition for the team’s article.

• What is the name of your team and why did you choose it?
  
  Our team is called Tartu team because five out of six members study at the University of Tartu and we proudly represent it. Moreover, all our advisers are the teaching faculty at the same university.
  
  
• Why do you think your team will have an edge in the event (what’s your secret sauce)?
  
  Our team is composed of members from 4 countries being Estonia, Latvia, Russia and Vietnam and from different academical backgrounds such as Computer Science, Chemistry and Material Science, Bioengineering and Robotics, and Automation and Computer Engineering. All this gives us an ability to solve the problems from different perspectives and applying knowledge from various sciences. We have participated in two largest supercomputer competitions ASC19 and ISC19 and thanks to that we know what to expect at Denver and how to prepare for that. We have been a team for only 9 months but we have become friends and comrades always willing to support each other. We believe that this is the main source of our power.
  
  
• What have you done to prepare that makes your team unique?
  
  In China we had to setup our cluster from scratch without any internet access and by building our own DHCP network sharing the net from the phone. In Germany we changed cluster configuration and added one more GPU node just an hour before the deadline. To USA we go prepared and ready for all possible problems that might arise. We have considered all possible situations and prepared for them.
  
  
• What are you most looking forward to in the competition?
  
  The SCC SC19 would give us an excellent opportunity to gain experience in HPC fields early on as well as improve the cooperation between the universities in the Baltic region for HPC activities. Besides, we expect all members to learn more about HPC and use HPC to facilitate their academic work/research. We strongly believe that our members, who participate in HPC competitions, will enrich the fields of their majors with the skill set they gain from working in our team, which would be beneficial for the various scientific areas of research in our universities.
  
  Teams projects/wishes:
  
  
  • Phuong is a chemistry student who could take advantages from HPC and do research and her bachelor thesis in Computational Material.
    
    
  • Vlad is currently working on his bachelor thesis in Bioinformatics. Experience with cluster enables him to analyze big data sets efficiently and he takes a great advantage of AMD EPYC ROME CPUs.
    
    
  • Anton is working on his bachelor thesis in Computer Science on concurrent data transfer and storage optimi- sation.
    
    
  • Rihards is an intern at RTU HPC centre, where he is learning HPC related system administration skills and ways to get the most out of Infiniband.
    
    
  • Ants is looking to improve on his skills in the administration of HPC systems.
    
    
  • Mait wants to keep improving with everything related to HPC and his university degree.
    
    
  Beyond apparent reasons, SCC SC19 would give us a great chance to attend the biggest HPC conference in the world. By connecting with people there, not only will we know more about the HPC field but we could also make plans for future and put a stepping-stone for our careers in the STEM field.
  
  
• How long will it take you to get to Denver?
  
  The team’s trip to Denver will be a long one as there is no direct flight from Estonia to USA. We will leave Estonia on the 15th October at 6 o’clock in the morning and will arrive on the same at 12:00. However, most of the flight time will be consumed by the difference between time zones. We will spend almost 14 hours on different planes as we have to go first to Finland and then travel from there to London. And only from Albion we will make our way to Denver. However, it won’t be the longest trip for our team as the trip to ASC19 at China was even longer.
  
  
• What do your team members do for fun?
  
  Each team member possesses a unique set of hobbies, but as a team we enjoy our weekly gathering at pubs simply chatting and enjoying each others company.
  
  
• If your team had a theme song, what would it be?
  
  If we had to choose one song that describes us the best, it would be "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" by Daft Punk. This song captures our desire to do everything better and to always strive for superior results. We believe that hard work always brings results and we will do everything in our power to achieve them. Every our day should bear greater results then the previous one. And only constant work without rest can help us achieve our goals.
  
  
• Can you share an interesting fact about your team?
  
  Our team was the only one team who went to the ASC19 in China without our baggage. In fact, the whole team’s baggage was lost in a transit airport. Surviving with a bare minimum of stuff is our newly-acquired skills. We also possessed the most ’eco-friendly’ server rack while waiting for the actual rack at the ISC19.

(a) Before		(b) After