Aug. 31 -- The DARPA High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) Program and IDC are pleased to announce the annual HPC Challenge Award Competition (www.hpcchallenge.org). The goal of the competition is to focus the HPC community’s attention on developing a broad set of HPC hardware and HPC software capabilities that are necessary to productively use HPC systems. The awards session will be held during the SC07 conference on Tuesday Number 13th during the 12:15 – 1:15 BOF session in rooms C1 / C2 / C3.

The core of the HPC Challenge Award Competition is the HPC Challenge benchmark suite developed at the University of Tennessee under the DARPA HPCS program with input from a wide range of organizations from around the world (see http://icl.cs.utk.edu/hpcc/).

The Competition will focus on four of the most challenging benchmarks in the suite:

• Global HPL
• Global RandomAccess
• EP STREAM (Triad) per system
• Global FFT

For the HPCC Awards there will be two classes of awards.

Class 1: Best Performance (4 awards - $750 each)

Best performance on a base or optimized run submitted to the HPC Challenge website. The benchmarks to be judged are: Global HPL, Global RandomAccess, EP STREAM (Triad) per system and Global FFT. The prize will be $750 plus a certificate for the best of each.

Class 2: Most Productivity (1 award - $2000 may be split)

Most "elegant" implementation of four or more of the HPC Challenge benchmarks with special emphasis being placed on: Global HPL, Global RandomAccess, EP STREAM (Triad) per system and Global FFT. This award would be weighted 50% on performance and 50% on code elegance, clarity, and size. Both will be determined by an evaluation committee. For this award, the implementer must submit to hpcc-awards@cs.utk.edu (by October 27, 2007) a short description of:

• the implementation,
• the performance achieved,
• lines-of-code, and
• the actual source code of their implementation.

The evaluation committee will select a set of finalists who will be invited to give a short presentation at the HPC Challenge Award BOF at SC07. This presentation will be judged by the evaluation committee to select the winner. The prize will be $2000 plus a certificate for this award and may be split among the "best" entries.

The Class 1 awards are decided based on benchmark results and should be clear cut. Benchmark results will be accepted up to the last moment.

The Class 2 award is more subjective. It will work as follows:

• Early bird entry to get feedback on the submission is by October 1st. We will provide feedback by October 7th so the submission can be improved.

o This is to help for compliance of the rules

o Only get one shot at an early bird submission (not iterative)

• Deadline October 27th for the submission.
  
  
• Awards Committee will choose three finalists who will each make a presentation at the SC07 session and a winner will be chosen at the session and the prize will be given there.

For more information or questions on the HPCC Challenge Awards, contact hpcc-awards@cs.utk.edu.

Awards Committee

David Bailey, LBNL NERSC
Jack Dongarra, (Co-Chair) U of Tenn/ORNL
Jeremy Kepner, (Co-Chair) MIT Lincoln Lab
Bob Lucas, ISI
Rusty Lusk, Argonne National Lab
John McCalpin, AMD
Rolf Rabenseifner, HLRS, Stuttgart
Daisuke Takahashi, U of Tsukuba
Jeff Vetter, ORNL

The HPC Challenge Benchmark is supported by DARPA, DOE, NSF and IDC.

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Source: DARPA High Productivity Computing Systems Program; IDC