Student Cluster Competition Team, The Roadrunners, Sponsored by Penguin Solutions at SC23

Penguin Solutions was excited to have supported the Student Cluster Competition (SCC) at Supercomputing 2023 (SC23) in Denver, CO. Penguin Solutions sponsored and provided mentorship to our student team, The Roadrunners from the University of New Mexico. The team of eight students utilized our infrastructure – including our Altus XE2214GTS Servers, AMD EPYC 7413 Processors and more – and expertise to support their testing of three-dimensional magneto hydro dynamic simulation (3DMHD) and atmospheric model for prediction across scales (MPAS).

The team – Ryan Scherbarth, Maisy Dunlavy, Alex Knigge, Ellie Larance, Carter Frost, Ellie Larance, Troy Redfearn, Nicholas Bacon, and Abdalaziz Raad – was composed of members who are traditionally considered to be underrepresented in STEM fields. The Roadrunners were formed as a result of the semester-long competition that resulted in multiple members receiving and accepting job offers from UNM’s Center for Advanced Research Computing over the summer. In preparation for the event, The Roadrunners met each week to discuss benchmarks that informed optimization strategies around a deep understanding of hardware and application constraints.

Originally established in 2007, the SCC aims to provide a unique and immersive HPC experience to students around the world. With sponsorship from hardware and software vendor partners, competing student teams design and build small clusters, learn scientific applications, and apply optimization techniques for their chosen architectures in a non-stop, 48-hour challenge.

The competition is a microcosm of a modern HPC center that aims to teach students the basics involved in forging a career in supercomputing. The Penguin team was proud to have sponsored and shared expertise in hardware, software, HPL, HPCG and MLPERF management to ensure The Roadrunners were prepared for this year’s match.

“Penguin Solutions provided a unique opportunity for traditionally underrepresented students to work with state-of-the-art HPC hardware that tackles real-world problems in machine learning, astrophysics, atmospheric modeling, and linear algebra,” said Dr. Matthew Friske, University of New Mexico professor and advisor to The Roadrunners. “The students learned a tremendous amount from their Penguin mentors, and had a great time doing it at the world-class SC23 competition. UNM looks forward to a continuing relationship with Penguin in future competitions.”

Special thanks goes out to Patrick Ward and Phil Pokorny for providing technical mentorship, software setup, hardware configuration, logistical support, and more to our Roadrunners team!

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