Student Cluster Competition

We are the Team deFAUlt and would like to tell you something about us.

• What is the name of your team and why did you choose it?
  
  Our team name deFAUlt is made out of the following parts:
  
  de is short for Germany (Deutschland), and
  
  FAU is the name of our university, the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg.
  
  
• Why do you think your team will have an edge in the event (what’s your secret sauce)?
  
  Our secret sauce is the refreshing and vitalizing mate-extract beverage from Münchsteinach, Germany, the Club Mate. The non-alcoholic drink is produced in Middle Franconia, close to Erlangen.
  
  It allows us to work NONSTOP because of the coffein in it. And it is indeed very refreshing! A really sad fact is, that it is not available in the US, so we maybe will switch to coffee to counteract the jet lag.
  
  Also, we got unicorns. With their magic power we will feel magic and well rested all the time!
  
  
• What have you done to prepare that makes your team unique?
  
  We contacted various members of the local computing center at our university to discuss some of our problems with experts in this field. We also talked to the previous teams to get an impression of the competition.
  
  During the last half year we visited a lecture to get in touch with system administration and benchmarking.
  
  Everybody made different researches with Linpack and HPCG on the various clusters of the Regional Computing Center Erlangen to determine the power consumption, efficiency, node-scaling abilities, as well as the impact of different matrix dimensions and frequencies.
  
  We completely set up a virtual cluster in small teams from scratch to gain first hands-on experience. We also deepened our understanding for the applications by accurately examining their functionality and how to optimize their results.
  
  Also, our cluster setup for the SCC features special hardware, Aurora Tsubasa Vector Engines from NEC. To get in touch with them, our team members visited different events from NEC. We also met NEC specialists at the hands on session at ISC19 and talked with them about our problems, they also told us how to use their specialized compiler in combination with pragmas to help the compiler vectorizing the loops.
  
  
• What are you most looking forward to in the competition?
  
  We expect to not get any sleep - hah, just kidding ;)
  
  We are really looking forward to socialize with the members of other teams and talk to them about their studies and differences between different countries. Two members of our team met members from different teams at SC18, ASC19 and ISC19, and are really looking forward to meet them again. We also hope to experience the conference, talk to potential future employers and get an insight of their jobs.
  
  For many of us it is the first time to travel to the USA - halfway around the world!
  
  
• How long will it take you to get to Denver?
  
  To Denver we will need...
  • one hour to get to the airport (from Erlangen to Nuremberg airport)
    
    
  • approximately 14 hours for the flight (from 11am in Germany until 4pm in Denver), and
    
    
  • an unknown time to pass the passport control.
  
  We hope that the jetlag won’t be too bad, because we change from UTC+1 to UTC-6, which are seven hours difference. But our Mate drink will help us out ;)
  
  
• What do your team members do for fun?
  
  We like to do different kinds of sports, for example dancing, skateboarding, running or cycling. Many of us play instruments like the flute, the piano or the guitar (maybe one instrument will get to the SC to wake up every one sleeping during the competition).
  
  And of course, we like to spend time in front of a computer, may it be for playing computer games or for tinkering on it. And sleeping. But honestly, who doesn’t like sleeping? ;)
  
  
• If your team had a theme song, what would it be?
  
  Our theme song is the song "Wissenswertes über Erlangen" from the Hitparade 1982. It tells something about our city so we think it is perfect for calling it ’our song’. You can watch this masterpiece on youtube, follow the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_k20C8hOEs
  
  
• Can you share an interesting fact about your team?
  
  Alltogether we can speak many different languages - more than we are members in our team!
  Below is a brief list of our language skill set:
  • german
  • english
  • japanese
  • french
  • latin
  
            and for real languages...
  
  
  • C / C++
  • java
  • python
  • shakespeare
  • shell
  • sed
  • awk
  • prolog
  • coq
  • scala
  • haskell
  • ruby
  • html
  • go
  • lua
  • cuda
  • x86, sparc and mips assembly
  • javascript
  • and many more ;)
  
  We hope we can use ALL of them for socializing ;)