TACC-BP 2014 - TACC-BP Parallel Programming Contest

Parallel Programming Contest
A chance to win exciting prizes by using your MPI, OpenMP, and CUDA skills
The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) is holding a parallel programming contest sponsored by BP America on January 13, 2014 and January 17, 2014 from 10 AM CST to 3 PM CST. This two-phase contest will be held both online and in-person at TACC. In the first phase, which will begin at 10 AM CST on January 13 2014, the contestants will be given two serial programs written in C that they will be required to parallelize. They will be expected to develop three parallel versions of the given serial programs using MPI, OpenMP and CUDA in a fixed time period. The top 25 participants will be invited to participate in the second phase of the contest to be held on January 17, 2014. The second phase will have the same rules and requirements as the first phase.
The parallel programs will be judged according to the following three criteria: accuracy of results, performance of the programs, and the time-to-development. The top 10 participants will be recognized for their efforts. The prizes are as follows:
First Prize: $1500 Visa Gift Card
Second Prize: $1000 Visa Gift Card
Third Prize: $500 Visa Gift Card
Fourth Prize: $250 Visa Gift Card
Fifth, Sixth, Seventh Prizes: $150 Visa Gift Card
Eighth, Ninth, Tenth Prizes: $100 Visa Gift Card
To participate in the contest, the contestants should complete their registration by December 20, 2013 by going to the following link: http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/tacc-bp-ppc-form
Each participant will get an account at TACC, which they will use to access the questions for the contest, do their programming on the Stampede supercomputer, and submit their solutions. The CUDA versions should be run on the GPUs on Stampede, the OpenMP versions should be run on Intel Xeon Phi on Stampede, and the MPI versions will be tested across the nodes on Stampede. The prizes for the contest and the certificates will be sent to the winners within six weeks of the conclusion of the contest.
Along with their contest registration form, participants are required to submit a resume to the contest organizers. The resumes will be made available to BP and TACC's other industry-partners for recruitment purposes. Personal information will not be published or used for any other solicitations.
Eligibility Conditions and Rules
The contest will be open to individuals currently residing in the United States.
The contestants should be affiliated with a school or university as a full-time student or a postdoc both at the time of registration and at the time of the contest. The contestants should not be affiliated to TACC staff judging the contest.
The contestants will be expected to develop and run three parallel versions of the given serial programs on the Stampede supercomputer at TACC:
a C + MPI program,
a C + OpenMP program, and
a C + CUDA program
The contestants are free to use online or printed resources during the contest.
All the programming required for this contest will be done on the Stampede supercomputer at TACC. The code submitted by the contestants can be used in any empirical study to be done in future.
All participants are required to have an SSH client to be able to login to Stampede. All online participants should also have a video-camera enabled on their computer.
The contestants will be required to join an audio-video conference (Adobe Connect or similar) during the contest. At any time during the contest, the video of the contestants can be recorded. The details related to the audio-video conference will be shared with the participants before the contest.
Additional information will be sent to the eligible contestants after Dec 20, 2013.
For more information or additional questions, email Dr. Ritu Arora at rauta-AT-tacc.utexas.edu.