HPC

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SCC11: Meet Team Russia

Second time the charm for Russian Bear?

Team Russia, representing the State University of Nizhny Novgorod, is returning to the Student Cluster Competition for the second time.

The team is again going with a hybrid approach, mixing Xeon CPUs (84 cores) and as many as 12 NVIDIA Tesla GPUs. I use the term ‘as many as’ due to the fact that they’ll probably end up changing their configuration to adhere to the 26 amp limit.

Even with throttling down system components, 84 Xeon cores and a dozen GPUs will suck up a lot of power – enough to push them over the limit. The team returns with the same coaching staff, the same sponsor (Microsoft), and a roster of both veteran and newbie competitors.

While they finished in the middle of the pack last year, they figure that another year of honing their clustering craft and another year of GPU development should pay off in a better finish.

Their first test was LINPACK on Monday, a task that should play to their “GPU-riffic” strengths. The other applications may or may not be a good fit for Team Russia’s hybrid cluster, depending on whether the team was able to find GPU- and Microsoft-ready versions of the code.

With an experienced team and solid hardware, the Russians have a solid shot at SCC success. ®

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