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Pimp my cluster: GPUs, liquid nitrogen and AAAAAH! ..that new compiler smell
Vets, first timers face off at supercomputing compo
Liquid nitrogen is ACE... yes, for, er, node cooling
The video begins with a behind-the-scenes discussion of the merits of liquid nitrogen for cooling applications. We weren't talking about it for use in the competition, but maybe if someone could wrangle a sponsorship from a liquid nitrogen maven, it could become reality....
Team Sooner is settling into the competition like most first time teams. They're both excited and anxious, which is typical. As one student put it “excitement and stress”.
UO is the third team to run with immersive cooling, but they’ve put a twist on it. Rather than use a smallish enclosure to match their modest cluster, Team Sooner went yard with a full 42U rack immersion tank from sponsor Green Revolution.
As you’ll see in the video, the five node Team Sooner cluster barely takes up any room at all in this huge container – which is exactly what the team is aiming for.
With their current set-up, the team barely has to run the pump and fan at all. They’re essentially using the massive reservoir as a heat sink. By removing the fans and not running the fan/pump of the reservoir, the team figures they get enough extra juice to allow for another node.
The students view this outing as an alpha test of their system design and clustering prowess. They see successive teams building on this foundation and, eventually, humbling the Texas Longhorns.
Team Illinois (Illinois Institute of Technology): is a small, historic, university located in Chicago. We debate the term “historic” a little bit at the beginning of the video. To me, that term often means ‘old’, ‘rat infested’, ‘grimy’…but that’s not always the case. However, it's almost always the case when applied to hotels - word to the wise.
We also talk some classic architecture - as in buildings, not computers. One of the claims to fame for IIT is that they're closely associated with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, a famous architect who used a lot of glass (aka the "less is more" guy). I initially confused him with IM Pei, the one architect I know anything about (with the possible exception of Howard Roark.)
After the architecture discussion, we turn to all things cluster competition. It's an interesting team, and includes a high school student (which isn't a first, but is pretty rare).
When asked about their strategy, the team explained that they were planning to run the apps sequentially through their box. I suggested that they will probably need to run the apps simultaneously in order to get close to completing everything on their task list.
The team also gives a shout-out to Argonne National Labs, their sponsor and mentor in the competition and also give some love to Intel, Mellanox, and NVIDIA for providing gear.
Team Tennessee (University of Tennessee, Knoxville) is a very upbeat team this year - which is quite a contrast to their demeanor at SC13 when they were struggling with hardware problems.
Their new attitude is well earned - they have working hardware, they’re running HPL, and they’re getting good numbers – what’s not to like? As one student put it: “We can use our computer as a computer and compute things with it. Last year, this was not a feature of our computer.”
Lots of new faces on Team Tennessee this year. Last year, the team had a couple of high school students make the trip to Denver, but this year, it’s all university guys – although there were high school guys working on the team back in Knoxville.
Right now, it looks like Team Tennessee is exactly where they want to be, competition-wise. They have working gear and seem to be very happy with their performance. They were so happy, that I would almost swear that I could hear "Rocky Top" emanating from kids and cluster alike.
Next up, we'll check out some interviews of teams from Europe, Australia, and Asia. Stay tuned... ®
Biting the hand that feeds IT
