Student Cluster Competition

• What is the name of your team and why did you choose it?
  
  
  
  The University of Utah mascot is the Utes, so we decided to call ourselves the SupercompUtes, using our school's block U logo in place of the 'U'. Our logo also incorporates the hexagonal honeycomb pattern of a beehive. Besides being Utah's state nickname (i.e., the Beehive State), the beehive is a classic icon of massive industrial coordination and productivity. Similar to compute clusters, bees must share resources, pass messages, and work in parallel to build the perfect hive. Moreover, like members of a beehive, our team is comprised of specialized skills and a variety of talents. Together we are a diverse yet integrated unit, capable of building an optimized environment through intelligent cooperation.
  
  
• Why do you think your team will have an edge in the event (what's your secret sauce)?
  
  Utah fry sauce is our secret sauce! It’s a mix of mayonnaise, ketchup and seasonings. But our real edge is that we trained at altitude.
  
  
• What have you done to prepare that makes your team unique?
  
  Four of us competed last year, and several of us have taken a parallel computing course last semester. We have had access to the nodes from last year's competition in the campus CHPC cluster.
  
  
• What are you most looking forward to in the competition?
  
  We are most excited to meet students from all around the country/world and learn how they approached the different problems presented by the applications. We are also looking forward to learning about future career opportunities in high performance computing.
  
  
• How long will it take you to get to Denver?
  
  It is just a 90-minute flight away.
  
  
• What do your team members do for fun?
  
  Our team members like to take advantage of the surrounding mountains, hiking, climbing, biking, and skiing.
  
  
• If your team had a theme song, what would it be?
  
  Warriors by Imagine Dragons, a band that started in Utah.
  
  
• Can you share an interesting fact about your team?
  
  Last year,we planned to form an eclectic band after the competition (ukelele, guitar, saxophone, piano, organ and drums). That didn’t pan out, so we decided instead to stick to high-performance computing and return to the SC Student Cluster Competition.