Student Cluster Competition        

We are an interesting team that combines the experience of two veteran rangers, who have participated and survived the SC14 and ISC15 competitions, with the passion of four rookie members. With this mix, we’ll be the cocktail of victory!

Our advisor is amazing!. He will not only share his knowledge with the team, but also provide a magic potion (some marvelous colombian coffee) during crucial moments, to keep the team focused and on the road to victory.

We are very proud to be representing our country and university in such a prestigious competition, despite the fact that HPC is a very new subject here, we’re going to give everything we’ve got, meet new people, learn a lot and lots of fun!

About Mateo Gómez Zuluaga

• What's your major and what led you to pick it?
  My major is computer science and I choose it because I love the idea of using computers to solve big and complicated problems across all fields of science and engineering.
• In what other events like this have you competed? Was that as a team or individually? How did you do?
  I have participated in SCC14 and ISC15 competitions, as part of a joint team between Purdue University and Universidad EAFIT. The both competitions were amazing, the environment, the people, I ended up learning a lot about HPC and the teams did a great job in both competitions.
• What training routine are you following to prepare for this year's SCC15 competition?
  We have a two hours meeting every Thursday morning to discuss about the competition (Apps, Cluster, profiling tool), resolve doubts and give updates on the work done.
• What's your primary role on your current team and why did you get that assignment?
  I'm the adviser because of my experience in previous competitions. My roles are coordinate the meetings, help the students with problems related to the competition and contribute with ideas to do a best job and support them.
• What's been your most challenging assignment in preparing for this competition? Do you think that assignment gave you an advantage in the competition?
  Until now, the most challenging assignment was setup the cluster remotely, since as you may know we are in Colombia and the cluster is in USA. We don't think it gave us an advantage, but it was for sure a hard to tackle issue.
• What's been the easiest part of preparing for the competition so far? How about the most difficult?
  Perhaps the hardest part has been choosing our team. We select only 6 members from a group of 8 talented undergraduate students, we grade experience as well as Technical and Interpersonal Skills. I think we take a good decision but it is never easy to make those kind of decisions. As for the easy part, I guess it has been motivating the team to do its work, those guys just love what they are doing, and you kind of notice that when they send a message at 2 am saying "...this XXX don't compile but I have..."
• What architectural details can you share that will put fear into the hearts of your competitors?
  Probably our accelerators (Nvidia K80s). They are our killers!
• What do you like about mysteries? How are your preparing for the mystery application?
  Mysteries are always amazing, our guess is that it'll be a benchmark application and we'll have to figure out the best way to run it (probably physical changes to our cluster). To be ready for that, I'm thinking on doing a mix challenge for my team before the competition, something that combines the mystery challenge of ISC15 (low power consumption) and the mystery app of SCC14 (Enzo).
• Why do you want to win? What are you willing to do to win?
  Of course we want to win every challenge (specially the main competition). We're working hard to be in good shape for the competition, (teamwork and dedication are our guidelines). Winning would be great for our university and country. It would be the best way to show that EAFIT and Colombia are supporting HPC, and how far this field has advanced in recent years.
• What are you planning to do after the competition is over?
  I am not sure, but I want to visit TACC and look for graduate studies options on HPC.