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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN-US">From:</span></b><span lang="EN-US"> Mojalefa Malahlela
<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Friday, 16 July 2021 16:43<br>
<b>To:</b> coms2@lists.wits.ac.za; coms1@lists.wits.ac.za; coms3@lists.wits.ac.za<br>
<b>Subject:</b> FW: High Performance Computing Competition 2021<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN-US">From:</span></b><span lang="EN-US"> Michael Beukman <<a href="mailto:1825748@students.wits.ac.za">1825748@students.wits.ac.za</a>>
<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Friday, 16 July 2021 11:44<br>
<b>To:</b> <a href="mailto:thirdyr@eie.wits.ac.za">thirdyr@eie.wits.ac.za</a>; <a href="mailto:secondyr@eie.wits.ac.za">
secondyr@eie.wits.ac.za</a>; <a href="mailto:coms2@lists.wits.ac.za">coms2@lists.wits.ac.za</a><br>
<b>Subject:</b> High Performance Computing Competition 2021<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Hi all,<br>
<br>
Every year the CHPC (<a href="https://www.chpc.ac.za/" target="_blank">https://www.chpc.ac.za</a>) facilitates the Student Cluster Competition programme, which is a multi-phase competition where teams of students learn how to set up a small cluster of computers
to use for scientific applications.<o:p></o:p></p>
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The CHPC stipulates that participating students must be in second year or above and not in the final year of their undergraduate program.<br>
<br>
This program is really good at teaching students about high performance computing and giving them hands-on experience with supercomputers. See
<a href="https://www.chpc.ac.za/index.php/training-workshops/scc/25-scc/159-scc-format" target="_blank">
here</a> for details of the structure.<br>
<br>
If you manage to win the round 2 competition, you will go to Texas for training with Dell and the Texas Advanced Computing Center (<a href="https://www.tacc.utexas.edu/" target="_blank">https://www.tacc.utexas.edu/</a>). You will proceed to the final round
in Germany.<br>
<br>
Note however, that round 1 will be virtual this year, and spread out over an 8 week period (from 23 July - 24 September), where you can work at your own pace. The workload will be the same as it was in previous years though, where the competition ran over only
one week. You do not need to be available from the start of the competition.<br>
<br>
<br>
Wits will be making 2 teams of 4 to participate in the first round of the program. <o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Team selection will take place next week and will require you to participate in a quiz testing your proficiency with linux. So this is a great opportunity for all you terminal wizards out there (no prior experience is required though).<br>
Attached is a PDF that is a crash course in linux. We <b>strongly</b> advise you to study this before the test, as most of the questions will cover topics found therein.<br>
<br>
We will be using <a href="https://courses.ms.wits.ac.za/moodle/course/view.php?id=127" target="_blank">Moodle</a> and Discord (<a href="https://discord.gg/77SKStdeK4" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:17.0pt;font-family:"Segoe UI",sans-serif;color:#0F6FC5">https://discord.gg/77SKStdeK4</span></a>).
Please enroll for the Moodle course and join the discord server.<o:p></o:p></p>
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On Monday, 2021/07/19, we will hold a short introductory meeting on Discord at 10:00 - 11:00, where you can ask any questions you have.<o:p></o:p></p>
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The quiz will be held on moodle right after the meeting. It will be available between Monday 11:00 and Tuesday 14:00 (i.e. 24 hours and some extra), but you will only have 1 hour to complete it once you start.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">The top scoring students will be contacted on Tuesday, and will need to provide some more information so we can register them officially.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<br>
For any questions (or problems with Moodle or Discord), you can either email me (<a href="mailto:1825748@students.wits.ac.za" target="_blank">1825748@students.wits.ac.za</a>) or join the discord server and ask any questions there.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><br>
tl;dr<br>
- There is a high performance supercomputing competition.<br>
- You need to be in year 2 of a 3 year program, or year 2 or 3 of a 4 year program.<br>
- No prior experience is required, as everything can be learned during the course of the competition.<br>
- You'll learn a lot.<br>
- It's fun.<br>
- The placement test is on Monday/Tuesday 2021/07/19 - 2021/07/20<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">If you aren't eligible for the competition (e.g. first or last year), but you are still interested in High Performance Computing, parallel programs and programming in general, feel free to still join the discord server, as we plan to have
a few meetings next semester where we will discuss some interesting topics.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;color:#888888">Regards<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;color:#888888">Michael Beukman<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;color:#888888"><a href="mailto:1825748@students.wits.ac.za" target="_blank">1825748@students.wits.ac.za</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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