The 2019 APAC HPC-AI competition saw its winner from the National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) for presenting the overall highest performance results and in-depth understanding of technologies.
The competition award ceremony event was held on August 26, 2019, in Singapore. It was jointly organised by the HPC-AI Advisory Council (HPC-AI AC) and The National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC).
The competition was on “Fostering future talent in AI and high-performance computing”.
Out of the 26 teams from 22 universities from across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region which took part in the competition, six finalist teams were welcomed to Singapore to present their research and innovations.
Their work was judged by leading High-Performance Computing (HPC) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) professionals from the University of Massachusetts USA, the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre Australia, NSCC Singapore, and the HPC-AI Advisory Council.
With HPC and AI technology transitioning to data-centric architecture, this new system will enable the top technology centres, big enterprises and research laboratories to study the increasing flow of data for exploring new areas and for designing future products.
The APAC HPC-AI competition thus provides the participating teams with the platform to display technological creativity and problem-solving skills on HPC and AI tasks.
The competition focused on two challenges:
AI challenge: Using TensorFlow framework for image recognition model training
HPC challenge: Using SPH (Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics) With Fine-grained inter-dependent Tasking (SWIFT) application
The AI challenge saw teams enhance the training performance of the ResNet-50 Neural Network model using the ImageNet-2012 image database. They produced results with training speeds as high as 11,720 images per second by employing 16 GPUs to attain an accuracy of 92.3% in just 90 minutes of training.
The HPC challenge saw teams enhance performance by about 2.64 times when compared to the baseline of a 32-node cluster.
The awards were presented by Professor Tan Tin Wee, Chief Executive of National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Singapore, Gilad Shainer, Chairman of HPC & AI Advisory Council and Dr DK Panda, Professor and University Distinguished Scholar of Ohio State University (OSU), presented the awards to the teams.
This the list of awards and winners:
- First Place: National Cheng Kung University (“Bowhivolar” team)
- Second Place: National Cheng Kung University (“AnonymousPanda” team)
- Third Place: National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan
- Honourable mention: Merit Prize: Fudan University
- HPC Honorable mention: Nanyang Technological University
- AI Honorable mention: The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
“AI and HPC are very much a part of daily life in Singapore, and globally. However, training our future talent pool in AI and in the HPC that enables it, is not enough,” said Prof Tan Tin Wee.
He added that NSCC collaborates with industry leaders and ecosystem drivers, like the HPC-AI Advisory Council, to develop the skillsets of the young generation and nurture their level of expertise to one where they stand globally competitive.
