January – April Virtual Competition

2024 Winter Classic Invitational Student Cluster Competition

College students? Supercomputing? Competition? What’s not to love?

Our Goals

Attract young new talent from diverse communities to HPC and get them hands on experience with real HPC systems and applications.

Give these highly motivated self-starters skills that will qualify them for intern and full-time positions in the industry.

Showcase their expertise, personalities, and institutions in the Winter Classic Student Cluster Competition.

The 2024 Winter Classic will be hosting eleven teams of students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs). Click on the link above to see the full roster for 2024.

Some of these teams are veterans from the 2023 or 2022 Winter Classic, while others are completely new to these competitions and HPC. At the end of the competition, students will have a wealth of hands on experience in building, running, profiling, and optimizing HPC applications on a variety of systems.

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Mentors fulfill a vital role in the Winter Classic Cluster Competition. Teams run their HPC benchmarks and applications on clusters in the mentor data centers, giving the students the rare chance to use a real-life HPC system. Mentors select the application that teams will run in the mentor data center. Mentors teach the team about the application, how to build and run it, how to profile it, and give the teams tips and tricks on application optimization.

Without our sponsors, there wouldn’t be a 2024 Winter Classic Cluster Competition, it’s as simple as that. We’re grateful for their generous support. Sponsors also actively recruit student participants for internship and full-time career positions. 

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Intersect360 Research

About the Organizers

The 2024 Winter Classic Invitational Cluster Competition is being organized by Intersect360 Research, a leading HPC industry analyst firm. Intersect360 Research is a market intelligence, research, and consulting advisory practice focused on high-performance data center trends, including High Performance Computing (HPC), high performance enterprise, cloud, big data, and hyperscale. Both Addison Snell, CEO and co-founder, and Dan Olds, Chief Research Officer, are deeply committed to this competition and the goal of building the HPC workforce and increase diversity in our industry.

What They Say

Testimonials

"The Winter Classic Student Cluster Competition is a much needed event in our industry. It is attracting students from diverse communities into HPC and helping their colleges and universities provide HPC-centric instruction."

Addison Snell

CEO, Intersect360 Researh

"I'm so happy that we're able to continue to organize the annual Winter Classic Invitational Student Cluster Competitions. I've been working with student cluster competitions for more than a decade now and the Winter Classic fulfills a critical need with it's outreach to HBSUs and HSIs."

Dan Olds

Chief Research Officer, Intersect360 Research

Please patronize

Our 2024 Sponsors