It’s the final challenge reveal show for the 2025 Winter Classic, and I’m joined by Matt Ziegler, Lenovo’s head of Neptune liquid cooling and sustainability. Matt is basking in a light drenched room as the sun is reflecting off the snow outside. And he looks that bright AFTER I changed lighting and contrast levels on his video. Live? It was hard to see him through the glow.
But moving on, the last challenge for this year was hosted by The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. The task? Build and run Quantum Espresso, optimize it on Bridges-2 CPU-only nodes and CPU + GPU nodes, then report their findings.
The PSC Quantum Espresso Challenge is worth 100 points to the team with the best results. These late competition challenges are particularly difficult for the students. They’re either mired in midterms or finals, or they’re out on spring break. Either way, they’ve gotta be fatigued from trying to keep up with everything.
In the video we go through the current standings, then the PSC results, and finally reveal the Big Board as the teams head into the judging interview. They will have to present their Winter Classic efforts to a panel made up of HPC experts and, um, me.