Source: SYSU News Center
Written by: Gao Fei
Photo by: Zhu Lin
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

In the morning on April 22, on the site of ASC14 finals at Guangzhou Supercomputing Center, the finalist teams were busy debugging and optimizing their clusters. Two almost identical faces attracted our attention. The twin sisters are juniors from the School of Mathematics & Computational Science at Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU).

The younger sister He Xiaoyu is the only girl in the SYSU team, who is in charge of running 3D-EW application on Tianhe-2, the world’s fastest supercomputer. The elder sister He Xiaofeng is a volunteer for ASC14 finals, who is in charge of the reception of the team from Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Born just one minute earlier than Xiaoyu, Xiaofeng is also the “nanny” for Xiaoyu.

"Xiaoyu has been preparing for this competition for more than two months. I’ve watched her from registration to closed training. As a volunteer for the competition, I can follow her progress," said Xiaofeng.

It is the first time for Xiaoyu to take part in the competition. The coach has assigned the 3D-EW task to Xiaoyu because of her good communication skills and attention to details. Xiaoyu had to learn a lot when she came to the team. Under immense pressure, she even suffered from insomnia for a while. At that time, Xiaofeng listened quietly and acted out to help her twin sister.

"Xiaoyu was in the lab from dawn to dusk. Once she soaked her clothes in the pail and forgot to wash them. When I received her phone call, I went to do the washing immediately," Xiaofeng has full confidence in her twin sister, “I hope she won’t be too nervous, relax, and achieve a good result!”

Xiaoyu and her teammates are making final preparations for the contest. Meanwhile, Xiaofeng is doing volunteer service. When twin sisters meet supercomputer, they march forward together.