It’s time to reveal the results from the Oak Ridge competition module, well, it’s actually well past time. My day job and travel schedule have put me way behind, but I am dedicated to getting all this great content out way before the next competition begins.
In this show, my special guest commentator is HPC legend Henry Newman. While he despises me personally, he put that aside for a few minutes to help analyze the results of the Oak Ridge Challenge and reveal the new leaderboard.
This year, Oak Ridge put together a drug discovery challenge based on real Covid data sets. This is the first real application the students have faced in the competition. Everything prior was some sort of benchmark, meaning a well-known workload with lots of reference materials online.
In the video, Henry remarked that he was “blown away” by the quantity and quality of the Oak Ridge training materials and “the materials were among the best I’ve ever seen for something like this.” But I’ve found that this is typical for the Oak Ridge staff, they cover all the bases, plus they were one of the most responsive mentor groups when answering student questions during the competition week.
Before the results from Oak Ridge were factored in, the competition was incredibly tight with less than 10 points (out of a possible 300) between the first and fifth place teams. Oak Ridge changed things up considerably.
The Roadrunners ran away with the 100 point top score, but the Texas Tech Matadors were less than five points behind. Fayetteville takes third, followed by Channel Islands Team A, the TTU Red Raiders, the Lobos, Santa Cruz, and the Channel Islands High Performance Dolphins.
But the big question is how this will impact the overall leaderboard, or “The Big Board” as we call it.
Here are a couple of hints: We have a new leader in the clubhouse. The TTU Matadors have dethroned the hated rival Red Raiders for the top slot. We have different teams in third, fourth, and fifth and finally a bit of distance between the top five. But with another three hundred points at stake with the upcoming AWS and Google competition modules, plus the grueling Judges Interview, it’s still anyone’s game.
Stay tuned for more Winter Classic action!