UC San Diego Team Wins MLPerf Contest
By Kimberly Mann Bruch
Two teams from the western U.S. participated in the 2023 Student Cluster Competition (SCC) held in conjunction with November’s Supercomputing Conference (SC) in Denver. The University of New Mexico (UNM) and the University of California at San Diego (UC San Diego) both participated in the SCC with the latter winning third place overall and first place in the MLPerf Contest.
This year’s UC San Diego SCC award-winning team. Front row: Mary Thomas (mentor), Francisco (Paco) Guitierrez, Gloria Seo, Rachel Handran, Jeremy Tow, Bryan Chin. Back row: Anish Govind, Khai Vu, Kyle Smith, Zixian Wang, Austin Garcia, Triston Babers. Credit: Jeremy Tow
The UC San Diego students, from the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and Jacobs School of Engineering, called their team Triton LLC (Last Level Cache). They were among a total of 11 in-person teams from around the world selected to compete. This is the second year in a row the student team has garnered awards at the supercomputing competition.
“It has been my most valuable experience working and learning with the whole team, spending 30+ hours every week for three months, striving for better performance on benchmarks and applications,” said Zixian Wang, a UC San Diego student majoring in computer science. “The competition result was very rewarding and I truly appreciate everyone’s effort and enjoyed the time together aiming for the same goal.”
The UNM team members - coined Roadrunners and supported by the University’s Center for Advanced Research Computing (CARC) - participated in SCC for the first time and were mentored by UNM Research Assistant Professor Matthew Fricke.
“Our goals were met, which is the most important thing,” Fricke said. “Taking part in the competition and experiencing what it’s like for the first time is impressive, I think they did a great job.”
While at SC23, several Roadrunners team members received internship offers while one of the team sponsors - Penguin Solutions - agreed to continue their support for SC24. One of three first-year teams, the Roadrunners are now considering participation in the May 2024 International Supercomputing Conference in Hamburg, Germany.
UNM HPC Team (Roadrunners) with Research Assistant Professor Matthew Fricke at the SC23 in Denver. From left to right: Aziz Raad, Carter Frost, Alex Knigge, Matthew Fricke, Ellie Larence, Ryan Scherbarth. Credit: SC23.
Details regarding each team’s participation is available on their respective organization’s website:
UC San Diego - https://www.sdsc.edu/News%20Items/PR20240129_scc.html