Supercomputer competition helps to find, nurture talented students

Tsinghua University won the overall championship of the 2015 Asia Student Supercomputer Challenge, the final round of which was held at Taiyuan University of Technology from May 18 to 22.

The National University of Defense Technology was the runner-up in the final, Singapore's Nanyang Technological University won the Highest Computing Performance Award and Sun Yat-sen University won the e-Prize Calculation Challenge Award.

Four universities won the award for innovative application.

The event, also known as ASC15, organized by the Asia Supercomputer Community, Inspur Group and Taiyuan University of Technology, started in November last year and attracted 152 teams from 135 universities, including 47 foreign universities.

Only 16 teams qualified for the final contest.

The universities showed strong supercomputing capability at this year's competition, Mo Zeyao, chairman of the judging panel, said at the event's closing ceremony.

Wang Endong, chief scientist at Inspur, said today supercomputing is closely related to science, technology, economy and culture, and it will become, after the Internet, another key technology with a huge impact on all areas of society.

The ASC can promote China's development in the field and also help train talented professionals, Wang added.

Lyu Ming, head of Taiyuan University of Technology, said the event encouraged more students at the university to learn about the emerging technology.

The ASC was proposed by China in 2012 and gained the support of experts and research institutes in the United States and Europe. It aims to find and cultivate excellent supercomputer students and boost the application and innovation capacities of the technology.

The event has become one of the world's top three supercomputer contests, on a par with the US SC and Germany ISC.

haonan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 05/29/2015 page10)