Team South Africa scooped top honours at the international Student Cluster Challenge in Leipzig, Germany this June. They achieved the highest total for all the benchmarks of the competition and aced the interview with the judges.

The Student Cluster Challenge is hosted by the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) and is an opportunity to showcase student expertise in a friendly yet spirited competition. Countries conducted domestic competitions to select their teams and eight teams were entered into the final. The CSIR's Centre for High Performance Computing was the organiser of the South African competition.

The challenge features small teams that compete to demonstrate the incredible capabilities of state-of- the-art high-performance cluster hardware and software. In a real-time challenge, teams of six undergraduate and/or high school students build small clusters of their own design on the ISC exhibit floor and race to demonstrate the greatest performance across a series of benchmarks and applications.

The students have a unique opportunity to learn, experience and demonstrate how high-performance computing influences our world and day-to-day learning. Held in collaboration with the High Performance Computing Advisory Council and ISC, the Student Cluster Challenge is designed to introduce the next generation of students to the high performance computing world and community.

The experience gained at this competition will assist South Africa in growing a generation of high-performance expertise for national economic development and for large projects such as the Square Kilometre Array.

The team will arrive at OR Tambo International Airport on Saturday, 22 June 2013. To read more about the Student Cluster Challenge, please visit: http://www.chpc.ac.za/index.php/training-workshops/scc

For more information, please contact:
Dr Happy Sithole
Director: Centre for High Performance Computing
Cell:  +27 84 511 6357
Office: +27 21 658 2740
E-mail: hsithole@csi.co.za