ACADEMIA
Microsoft Challenges Students to use HPC to Address Everyday Problems
£20,000 in Prizes and a Judging Panel Consisting of the Leaders in HPC from Across the UK: Microsoft UK has launched a new competition aimed at improving lives through technology. The HPC Challenge is a High Performance Computing competition committed to helping the brightest minds in the UK innovatively solve the World’s toughest problems. The competition is open now to UK based higher education organisations and the first phase closes on 14th December 2007. Terms and conditions apply, students can register at its Web site. 
The winners of the competition will receive £5,000 for their team and a further £5,000 for their institution, with the five runners-up teams receiving £2,000. Teams registering for the competition will be able to acquire Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server (CCS) licenses for £1 per node (minimum 10 nodes) to support the development of their solutions.
“HPC is about solving the really big problems. It's about taking technology beyond what you can achieve on a PC: designing drugs and combating diseases; breaking codes and safeguarding privacy; forecasting the money markets; designing new aircraft and testing new cars; predicting the future of the universe - or of our climate next month.
We want to encourage students with ideas about how to change the world. Let’s get them using the best technology on the planet to make their ideas’ real. We believe that students entering this competition will address problems that could significantly improve the daily lives of millions of people around the world in the future – realising their own potential and that of High Performance Computing” said Dr Michael Newberry, HPC Product Manager at Microsoft UK.
The final will take place at a Microsoft HPC User Group meeting in May 2008, where each finalist will present and be judged on the originality of the problem they are solving and the process that led to the final submission. The HPC User Group consists of some of Britain’s pre-eminent researchers working in fields as diverse as climate change, epidemiology, security and the financial sector and will be looking for creativity, vision and innovation in all entries.
Professor Simon Cox , Professor of Computational Methods, in the School of Engineering Sciences at the University of Southampton added “I’m sure I will be amazed by the submissions. The students who participate in Student vs Student represent the next generation of leaders. Their creativity and innovation speaks volumes about the promise of technology to make a difference in peoples’ lives in the way we think, work and communicate.”
The winners of the competition will receive £5,000 for their team and a further £5,000 for their institution, with the five runners-up teams receiving £2,000. Teams registering for the competition will be able to acquire Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server (CCS) licenses for £1 per node (minimum 10 nodes) to support the development of their solutions.
“HPC is about solving the really big problems. It's about taking technology beyond what you can achieve on a PC: designing drugs and combating diseases; breaking codes and safeguarding privacy; forecasting the money markets; designing new aircraft and testing new cars; predicting the future of the universe - or of our climate next month.
We want to encourage students with ideas about how to change the world. Let’s get them using the best technology on the planet to make their ideas’ real. We believe that students entering this competition will address problems that could significantly improve the daily lives of millions of people around the world in the future – realising their own potential and that of High Performance Computing” said Dr Michael Newberry, HPC Product Manager at Microsoft UK.
The final will take place at a Microsoft HPC User Group meeting in May 2008, where each finalist will present and be judged on the originality of the problem they are solving and the process that led to the final submission. The HPC User Group consists of some of Britain’s pre-eminent researchers working in fields as diverse as climate change, epidemiology, security and the financial sector and will be looking for creativity, vision and innovation in all entries.
Professor Simon Cox , Professor of Computational Methods, in the School of Engineering Sciences at the University of Southampton added “I’m sure I will be amazed by the submissions. The students who participate in Student vs Student represent the next generation of leaders. Their creativity and innovation speaks volumes about the promise of technology to make a difference in peoples’ lives in the way we think, work and communicate.” 