Two of the top-performing student teams from BEAR Challenge 2024 have gone onto compete in a national student cluster challenge. Online challenges began in October and culminated in three days of in-person activities in Manchester, where they competed with 14 other teams from universities across the UK at Computing Insight UK (CIUK). From the start of the online challenges, the teams were provided with access to a Research Infrastructure Engineer (Simon Atack) and two Research Software Engineers (Simon Hartley and Matthew Barton) from Advanced Research Computing to provide support.
The two teams – return-1 and T.E.D. (Tech Embracing Developers) – both finished in the top 10, with just 1 point between 9th place (T.E.D.) and 10th (return-1). They both finished up with a particularly strong challenge, placing in the top 6 teams – see the CIUK Cluster Challenge pages for full results. Both teams enjoyed the experience and describe their highlights below.
Team return-1
Team return-1 consists of Tahashin Muaz, Lydia Barucka, Ayush Acharjya, Fearne Townsend, Ivan Korniichuk and Vivan Waghela (who was unfortunately unable to make the in-person challenges). Fearne writes about her experience below – see Fearne’s full LinkedIn post here:
For the last three months return -1; has made its second endeavour into the world of HPC. With challenges from Alces Flight Ltd, Logicalis, and OCF Limited, we took them in our stride as rookies to the field.
Challenges on workload cost and power optimisation, building our own auto scale clusters and machines using RONIN Cloud, and using docker to benchmark and create kubernetes clusters.
The past three days in Manchester at the CIUK conference has been great, and I’ve gotten to meet some really amazing people.
Team T.E.D.
Team T.E.D. consists of Aaron Abraham, Shay Patel, Siddharth Shringarpure, Adwit Mukherji, Daniel Ebbutt and Victor Andraous. Siddharth writes about his experience and highlights below – see Siddharth’s full LinkedIn post here:
Training AI to predict how ice cubes cool your drink, classify your music, or what happens when you put egg whites into water? CIUK 2024 had us exploring all of this and more! 🤔
Following our success at the BEAR Challenge, my team and I dived deep into the CIUK Cluster Challenge, where we explored real-world HPC applications and tackled some of the most common challenges in this space. Starting with fortnightly online challenges on workload cost and power optimisation, we culminated with an intense, three-day competition at the National Computing Insight UK Conference in Manchester, where we proudly secured a top 10 finish! 🏆
Working alongside my team, some of the many tasks we tackled included:
• Building auto-scaling clusters 🌐
• Containerising and benchmarking Kubernetes clusters 🐳
• Optimising power usage for HPC applications ⚡
Some of my key highlights from this journey include:
• Gaining hands-on experience with cutting-edge HPC tools and platforms 🔧
• Experiencing the importance of collaboration and adaptability firsthand in solving complex challenges 🤝
• Networking with experts and peers, wherein I gained invaluable insights into both HPC, and the world around it 🌍A huge thanks to Damian Jones and the Computing Insight UK and STFC teams for organising such an impactful event; to the University of Birmingham Baskerville and BEAR teams for putting us through to this next stage; to Alces Flight Ltd, Logicalis, and OCF Limited for the challenges; and to my incredible teammates, (Shay, Danny, Victor, Adwit, Aaron), whose persistence and dedication made this an unforgettable experience! 🙌
Looking forward to applying these insights to future opportunities and continuing to explore innovation in computing! 🔮
It was great to hear how worthwhile the student teams found taking part in the CIUK 2024 Cluster Challenge. We are already making plans for BEAR Challenge 2025 to train up a new cohort of students with skills in HPC in preparation for future careers in the area, and to tackle future challenges at CIUK 2025! If you’re a taught student (undergraduate or masters) and interested in taking part in BEAR Challenge, register your interest with us at bearinfo@contacts.bham.ac.uk.
