Student Cluster Competition        

What is the name of your team and why did you choose it?

Boston Green Team is a joint collaboration between Boston University, Umass Boston, and MIT. The "green" means that we're committed to running code efficiently, and in doing so we're saving the planet and advancing the frontier of what's possible. We've experimented with green architectures in the past, at ISC we ran an 8 node Nvidia Jetson TX1 cluster. At one point the power draw was so low that the PDU showed us at zero watts.

Why do you think your team will have an edge in the event (what's your secret sauce)?

We have a lot of experience overcoming obstacles. We have worked hard as a team, meeting twice weekly to prepare. Our scariest obstacle was when we showed up to the airport to check our nodes and found out that Delta would not check computers. Our argument that our big boxes were not computers and just expensive heaters did not convince them ☹. We have a great team spirit and perseverance.

What are you most looking forward to?

We're all new to SC, so we're really excited to meet other people who are passionate about HPC and learn a lot. We have a friendly rivalry with the other Boston based team, Northeastern University, so we're excited to go head to head, gpu to gpu, cpu to cpu and battle it out for the top spot.

How long will it take you to get to Salt Lake City?

Our flight BOS->SLC took 4 hours and 12 minutes.

What do your team members do for fun?

We really like to play geeky games such as Dungeons and Dragons and Magic. We occasionally host python spelling bees. Boston is really cold in the winter so we hunker down in the server room and run HPL to keep warm.

If your team had a theme song, what would it be?

"Under Pressure" by David Bowie.

Can you share an interesting fact about your team?

We have more females than males.