Winter Classic Invitational Schedule Change
BEAVERTON, OR., September 29, 2020 – The Winter Classic Invitational Student Cluster Competition Committee has announced a schedule change for the inaugural 2021 competition. The competition, originally scheduled for January 25-29, 2021, will instead run from March 15-19, 2021.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is the main reason behind the schedule change:
- Universities are operating remotely, adding more time to the task of forming student teams and securing faculty coaches.
- Isolation and remote meetings will make it more difficult and time consuming for students to undergo training and coaching on cluster use and performance optimization
The competition will return to the late January timeframe in 2022.
“We just want to give the students as much time as possible to be trained up on HPC and the applications in order to get the most out of the experience,” said Dan Olds, event organizer. “Given the restrictions caused by the virus and the fact that all of these teams are new to cluster competitions, it’s even more important that they be given as much time as possible to prepare for the competition.”
This inaugural competition is the first student cluster competition to proactively recruit historically black and minority universities will have a virtual format where student teams remotely run their applications on vendor-provided hardware in vendor data centers.
This Winter Classic Invitational Student Cluster Competition, joins SC, ISC and ASC global competitions as the fourth major cluster competition held annually to support the need to mentor and learn for university students interested in HPC, AI and science based computation.
Applications for schools are available now, on the Winter Classic Invitational website. Prospective vendor sponsors can obtain more information by contacting the competition committee.
Prizes and scholarships will be granted to winning competition participants. This includes the Brueckner Award which honors long-time HPC journalist Rich Brueckner.
Contact:
Dan Olds
Dan.Olds@gabrielconsultinggroup.com
(503) 372-9389
About the Winter Classic Invitational Student Cluster Competition
The WCISCC is led by Dan Olds, with his 25 years in the high technology industry, including positions with Sun Microsystems, IBM, and currently as head analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group. Dan has been a judge and organizer and has covered every student cluster competition since 2010. His coverage includes hundreds of articles and videos that have appeared in The Register, InsideHPC and HPCwire where he continues to contribute ongoing. For more info, please visit the WCISCC website.
