February 14th to April 15th, it’s been a long run for the 2023 Winter Classic Student Cluster Competition. 63 students from HBCU and HSI schools learned hands-on HPC from HPE, NASA, Oak Ridge National Lab, and AWS. With luck, we’ll have many of these students looking for opportunities in our data centers, helping to refresh our talent pool.
Now that we’re done, and I’ve finally gotten off the road, it’s time to find out who did what and how it all turned out.
The Results
In the closest finish of any Winter Classic competition, the High Performance Dolphins Deluxe team from Cal State University Channel Islands held off the Not So Slow Slugs from University of California Santa Cruz. How close was it? Damned close. The two teams were only separated by 4.29 points out of 700 possible points, 659.65 vs. 655.35 respectively. Wow.
Coming in third place was the Matador team from Texas Tech University with 603.94 total points. Fourth place and Honorable Mention goes to first time competitor, the team from Cal Poly Pomona. Excellent work.
You can see the details about the tasks the students completed, the results, and the final standings in our Studio Update Show video below. Don’t pass on this one, it’s the Director’s Cut, and includes an interview with Trish Damkroger, HPC maven at HPE, plus prime cuts of me making fun of my broadcast partner, Addison Snell. It’s must see viewing.
We’d be remiss if we didn’t thank our sponsors one more time. HPE did double duty as Platinum Sponsor and mentor for the HPL/HPCG challenges. AWS sponsored and mentored the AWS GROMACS Challenge. Penguin Solutions pitched in on our HPC Pop Quiz and was also a competition sponsor. AMD, Cornelis Networks and BioTeam round out our sponsor slate – we greatly appreciate the support!
We also have to thank all of the students, schools, mentors, everyone who followed the competition, plus all of your who will hire our student competitors. Feel free to reach out to me if you want to get a look at resumes, I’m easy to find.