University News

【ASC14@SYSU】ASC14 final drew its curtain, SYSU team won Highest Linpack award with new world record

Source: SYSU News Center, Inspur Group
Written by: SYSU News Center, Inspur Group
Photo by: Guo Zhongfei
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

On April 25, the 2014 ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge (ASC14) final drew its curtain at Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU). SYSU team set the new world record with 9.272TFlops under the 3000W power budget in Linpack test, winning the Highest Linpack award and the First Prize of ASC14. Shanghai Jiao Tong University team won the Champion award and Nanyang Technological University team won the Silver Winner award of ASC14.

Prof. Xu Ningsheng, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and President of Sun Yat-sen University; Mr. Wang Endong, Initiator of ASC, Director of State Key Laboratory of High Performance Server and Storage Technology, and Senior Vice President of Inspur Group; Prof. Yuan Xuefeng, Director of National Supercomputer Center Guangzhou; Prof. Xu Yuesheng, Chair of ASC14 General Organization Committee and Professor of School of Mathematics and Computer Science of SYSU; supercomputer experts from home and abroad, 16 finalist teams, media representatives, a total of nearly 300 people attended the closing ceremony of ASC14. The closing ceremony was presided over by Prof. Li Mengfeng, Vice President of Sun Yat-sen University.

Prof. Mo Zeyao presenting the Highest Linpack award to SYSU team
 
President Xu Ningsheng pointed out in his speech that in recent years SYSU has attached great importance to interdisciplinary academic research and talent cultivation. While developing disciplines in humanities, sciences and medical sciences, SYSU explores disciplines in engineering and applied technologies, especially emerging engineering sciences to promote integrated development. Supercomputing and big data is a focus of development at SYSU. School of Advanced Computing, Institute of Advanced Computing Applications, Big Data Research Institute, and Engineering Research Center of Supercomputing Engineering Software of Ministry of Education have been established to show our resolve and strength to serve the society. He stressed that the nurturing of young talents is crucial for China to become a real supercomputing power in the future. President Xu Ningsheng hoped that through hosting ASC14, SYSU will promote teaching, research and development of related disciplines, foster high-quality supercomputing talents with international visions, and improve students’ innovative and creative abilities.

Mr. Wang Endong said that the speed and level of supercomputer development is an important indicator of a country’s comprehensive strength. Aimed at developing supercomputing applications and fostering supercomputing talents, ASC is a “practice classroom” for university students to participate in the whole supercomputing process including cluster building, parallel computation and performance optimization, thus helping to make supercomputer an infrastructure for science and technology innovation.

Prof. Mo Zeyao, Chair of ASC14 Evaluation Committee and Deputy Director of Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics in Beijing, announced the ASC14 final results and said that the overall level of ASC14 final surpassed previous contests.

ASC14 is co-organized by Asia Supercomputer Community, Sun Yat-sen University and Inspur Group. It is the world’s largest student supercomputer competition initiated in Asia. Since its launch in November 2013, 82 teams from five continents registered for ASC14. 16 teams participated in the ASC14 final held on April 21-25 at SYSU.