We’re finally at the end of the 81-day HPC-packed 2025 Winter Classic Invitational Student Cluster Competition. We had ten teams cross the finish line to complete the competition, which is admirable given that they were dealing with full-time course loads, outside jobs, family/friends, plus everything that goes with the competition on top.
We had a surprising number of students, mentors, and coaches watching our video presentation. I had to change the time maybe 35 times in a three day period and figured that we might have lost the entire audience in the shuffle, but they rode it out.
In the first part of the video, we discuss the new features for 2025, namely the curated introduction to Linux course, courtesy of the Linux Foundation and the HPC Boot Camp (which we used for our HPC Crash Course challenge) from John Urbanic of the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. The feedback from students was overwhelmingly positive for both. In fact, I made the executive decision to feature the HPC Crash Course as the first event in future Winter Classics.
In the video, we go over what happened in the 2025 edition of the contest, covering the teams, mentors, and sponsors. My special guest co-host for this one is Patrick Porto, HPE’s HPC/AI Global Services Solutions Leader. Patrick has also appeared on a couple of student team interviews (both Fayetteville teams) and he and HPE have been great supporters of the Winter Classic.
While we’re talking about sponsors, HPE was our Platinum sponsor this year, with Lenovo and Intel at the Gold Tier level. We managed to get a quick video message from Brian Conners, Lenovo’s WW VP & GM of Enterprise, SMD & AI Business Segments. Many thanks to Brian for taking the time.
After the overview stuff, we go through each of the scoring events (there are seven in all, each worth 100 points) and highlight the top finishers in each. (This was to keep the call from becoming too long. There are more detailed scores for each competition module in our update stories on our website and are also featured in HPCwire.)
We saw some astounding performances over the course of the competition. The Texas Tech Red Raiders led the field from beginning to end, which is a first in the five year history of the Winter Classic. They were also the first repeat champion and had the highest overall point total. A tour de force for sure.
There were some big moves in the rest of the pack, however, namely on the part of the Santa Cruz ‘Not So Slow Slugs’ and the other Texas Tech team, the Matadors. We also saw some of the returning teams reach their best records yet in the event.
But, of course, the important thing is that everyone learned a lot in this real-world HPC slugfest. They ran real jobs on five different supercomputers and even a genuine quantum system, courtesy of Oak Ridge and IQM. The students now have the confidence to tackle HPC internships or full-time entry level positions.
Employers? Take a close look at these students, they might be your perfect next hire.
Thanks for following the competition and watching these students make bigtime progress towards their post school lives.