SCC Connect

SCC Connect is a companion to the Student Cluster Competition (SCC) with a focus on accessibility and education. While sharing many goals with SCC, an additional goal of SCC Connect is to lower the barrier to entry for teams that are not selected or able to compete in the SCC this year, but have a goal of doing so in a future year. It takes significant time and effort to put a team together, and one motivation for the creation of SCC Connect was to provide additional opportunities for teams not selected to apply their hard work, gain experience, and maintain momentum for future years. 

SCC Connect teams compete using provided cloud resources and are not required to partner with a vendor, assemble a cluster in hardware, or attend the conference. 

Teams apply to SCC Connect through the same submission form as the SCC. Teams should indicate on that form whether they would like to be considered only for SCC, first for SCC and for SCC Connect if not selected for SCC, or only for SCC Connect. Indicating you would like to be considered for SCC Connect does not guarantee you will be selected for the competition.

SCC Connect aims especially to foster the development of less-experienced teams, and to help teams that competed in the previous SCC but are not selected for SCC at SC26, to keep momentum in their development of HPC experience. 

A team is composed of six students and an advisor. Students work with their advisors to craft a proposal that describes the team, their educational goals and how they plan to prepare for the competition. The SCC and SCC Connect committees review each proposal and select teams for the competition. The requirements for teams, the selection process, and what makes a good proposal are described in more detail below.

Selected teams are invited to participate in preparation and learning activities from late summer to November, and a remote competition during SC26.

Students, with the guidance of their advisor, will craft a proposal that describes their team, their educational goals and how they plan to prepare for the competition. The SCC and SCC Connect committees review each proposal and select teams for the competition. 

Your proposal will describe your team members, their strengths and goals, and how everyone will work together in order to learn and compete. A good proposal will describe how the team members have different strengths and skills (i.e., academic studies and inclusion of non-STEM majors), diversity (inclusion of underrepresented groups in your home regions and institution), and how members will work together and contribute to a strong team. This should not be a simple list of each team member’s qualifications – the reviewing committee will want to see how you will work together as a team. Describing your efforts to recruit a diverse team is also recommended.

You will also describe how your team will prepare for the competition. We are looking for evidence that you have a plan to prepare, both before and after getting access to the provided cloud resources. This could include things like meeting regularly to work on the cluster, explore topics, practice, attend guest lectures, etc. Mentioning any classes the team members are taking that directly relate to the competition may also be helpful, but be sure to explain how they will benefit the team rather than listing a course catalog. 

Finally, you will describe your team’s educational goals and what your team hopes to gain by participating in the competition. You should be as specific as possible with your goals rather than listing vague high level goals – we want to know what makes your team unique!

Teams will be provided remote or cloud-based HPC resources and guidance on accessing the resources. Continuous support is provided by HPC experts in the months leading up to the competition. Webinars are recorded for the virtual platform, the benchmarks, and the two applications. At times during the preparation, teams will be asked to submit reports relating to their preparation, and will receive feedback from the experts.

Participants are encouraged to source travel support from their local institution and supporters to attend the conference in person. Reduced rate in-person and Digital Experience registration are available for SCC Connect student participants.

Benchmarks

Teams will run some industry-standard benchmarks on their provided resources. 

Applications

Weather Research & Forecasting Model (WRF)

The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model is a premier high-resolution mesoscale numerical weather prediction system that is used worldwide by atmospheric researchers and operational forecast teams alike to simulate the dynamics of typical and extreme weather events at scales ranging from tens of meters to thousands of kilometers.

An HPC center mainstay, WRF provides two dynamic cores, a robust data assimilation system, an architecture that supports parallel computation and system extensibility with MPI and OpenMP support, and relies on NetCDF for data management and compression.

High-resolution WRF simulations can be very computationally intensive at larger scales, requiring significant memory resources and parallel processing to resolve in a timely manner. To navigate this storm, SCC teams should consider the data management and memory requirements needed to accommodate large-scale simulations and the implementation of CPU parallelization optimizations when planning for this challenge.

Information on WRF can be found at: https://www.mmm.ucar.edu/models/wrf 

This application is supported by Wenxu (Zoey) Liao, Dania Al-Oqaily, Andrew Janiszeski, and Paola Crippa.

Multicomponent Flow Code (MFC)

The Multicomponent Flow Code (MFC) is a state-of-the-art computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulator, solving partial differential equations representing the interactions of fluids such as air and liquids in complex systems, with real-world applications ranging from medical treatments to spacecraft takeoff.

This application is portable and scales ideally across hardware compositions ranging from consumer laptops to exascale systems. The MFC team’s recent benchmarks have proven the software’s ability to represent small-scale flow features while massively reducing the time and energy requirements for these simulations, earning recognition as a 2025 Gordon Bell Prize Finalist.

SCC teams will need to consider tuning their runs to parameters that align with their cluster’s capability for both CPU and GPU parallelism.

Information about MFC is available at: https://github.com/MFlowCode/MFC and https://mflowcode.github.io

This application is supported by Spencer Bryngelson. 

Teams are composed of six students and an advisor.

• The advisor provides guidance and recommendations.
• The students provide the skill and enthusiasm.
• SCC Connect will provide cloud-based resources that the teams will run on.

Teams can optionally nominate up to two “logistics coordinators”, who are secondary advisors or other support staff who should receive a copy of any communications sent to the primary advisor. 

Teams will be invited to participate based on their Team Application, submitted via the SC Submission System. The Team Application includes a description of the team, their approach to the competition, their team and institution diversity, and several other considerations. SCC and SCC Connect committee volunteers review each proposal and provide comments for all submissions. The team composition must all conform to the rules described below. 

Advisor Requirements

• Advisors are required to be staff, faculty or graduate students of the team’s educational institution(s) or sponsoring HPC center.
• The primary advisor should provide support, guidance, and be available to the student team members during the educational period leading up to the final 48-hour competition.
• The advisors cannot assist the team members during the final 48-hour competition, but they must be available to the team and competition organizers for any logistical or other needs that arise.

team Composition

Student team members must:

• Be enrolled in a university, college, high school, or equivalent level of academic institution.
• Be at least 18 years old by the start of the competition
• Not have received a bachelor’s degree or equivalent before the start of the competition

Teams are encouraged to include diverse participation including new participants and under-represented groups. Teams will be gaining experience with a variety of scientific computing codes, so teams are also encouraged to recruit members with varying academic backgrounds. 

Entry into SCC Connect will be by invitation. Teams submit the same application form as SCC applicants, and SCC Connect teams are selected from those that indicate either a preference to join SCC Connect, or a desire to be considered for SCC Connect should they not be accepted into the SCC. An indication of a preference of one competition or the other is not a guarantee of an invitation into that or any competition.

Assistance & Resource Access

During preparation for the competition, the Team Advisor and other supporters are encouraged to help the team train for the competition. However, only the six registered team members will have access to the resources provided by SCC Connect.

No External Assistance

• Once the benchmarking component begins, the six team members must work on the competition tasks with no external assistance – advisors, vendor partners and other supporters must not help the team in any way. Outsourcing of competition tasks to either paid services or unpaid volunteers is not permitted.
• Teams are allowed and encouraged to help other teams. On-site teams are also encouraged to interact with conference attendees. Vendor partners, advisors, and alternate team members are welcome to come by during the exhibit hall open hours to express support. However, teams must not receive advice or assistance from anyone except for other students competing on an SCC Connect team (no attendees, exhibitors, advisors, vendor partners, alternate team members, etc can help).

On-site Teams

• Only the team members may access the booth or any other resources provided by SCC Connect
• Student teams members may, upon invitation by another team, enter that team’s booth for the purpose of cooperative debugging.
• Terminal windows or screens not displaying visualization of the team’s work must not be readily visible to anyone outside the booth. This is to prevent attendees from seeing what the team is working on and offering advice. 

Conduct

Teams must conduct themselves professionally and adhere to the Code of Conduct. All participants must compete fairly and ethically. Good sportsmanship is strongly encouraged. Hindering, interfering, or in any way sabotaging other teams is prohibited.

Teams must adhere to all posted warnings, signs, and follow all instructions given by SC or SCC Connect committee members, convention center security/safety staff, and other officials. Teams may not attempt to bypass any security or safety devices or directives. Teams in violation of this rule may be subject to point penalties, disqualification, or expulsion from the convention center.

System Software

• All system software (operating system, drivers, filesystems, compilers, etc) used in the competition must be publicly or commercially available at the start of the competition. 

Benchmarks & Applications

• The application executables used in the competition must be built by the team members from open source implementations. Vendor-provided executables for benchmarks are permitted as long as those executables are publicly available, e.g. by download from the vendor’s website.  Teams using a vendor-provided binary for a benchmark must, at least 2 weeks before the benchmarking component begins, inform the committee of the URL for the binary and obtain confirmation from the committee that this is a valid binary for the benchmark. 
• Executables for benchmarks and applications may be built in advance by the team members, but teams must provide the URL of the source package (for tarballs, etc) and, where applicable, the commit hash (for git repositories, etc). Teams should also be prepared to demonstrate building and running the executable if requested. 
• Teams may study and tune the code used in the benchmarks and applications. Any modifications to the source code made by the team must be shared with the SCC Connect committee at least 2 weeks before the benchmarking component begins, and are subject to approval by the application judges. Judges may reject modifications to the code (e.g., modifications that change the scientific acceptability of the results, may be rejected). 

• All on-site participants (including advisors) must attend the Orientation/Safety Briefing. Teams will NOT be permitted access to the exhibit hall until they have received a safety briefing. Team advisors will also NOT be permitted access to the SCC Connect booth until they have received a safety briefing with their teams.
  • Teams whose travel schedule does not permit attending the scheduled safety briefing should contact the committee to arrange an alternative safety briefing that they can attend before performing any SCC Connect activities. 
  • Teams experiencing travel delays should contact the committee ASAP to inform of the delays so alternative safety briefings can be arranged. 
• All on-site students must attend the Saturday Students@SC Orientation and Student Mixer.
• At least one student competitor from each team must attend the daily committee-and-teams stand-up meeting. Failure to attend may result in point penalties.
• There must be at least 2 student competitors in their team booth at all times while the exhibition floor is open, except during mandatory events scheduled elsewhere. The show floor opens after the opening Gala on Monday night and each day typically from 10 am–6 pm local time.

Further mandatory events will be announced at a later date.

• Booth layout and booth occupancy are always subject to safety as first consideration. If a task cannot be done safely, then it is unacceptable. When in doubt, ask an SCC Connect committee member. 
• Each team will be assigned a team liaison from the SCC Connect committee. Your team liaison is a good first point of contact for safety or logistics questions. However, if your team liaison is not immediately available you are encouraged to ask any available committee member.
• Any team operating in an unsafe manner may be subject to point penalties or disqualification.
• On-site SCC Connect teams will have access to their booths when the exhibit is open (10 am–6 pm). Teams will be allowed in the booths 24/7 from when the contest opens until when it ends, however teams should note that the conference center is some distance from the hotels and you should plan your travel between hotel and conference center to prioritise safety – do not attempt to walk to or from the the conference center at night.
• Teams are never permitted to enter “off-limits” areas, such as staging areas used by the convention center staff. Teams that enter off-limits areas will be subject to point penalties or disqualification.
• Teams are required to keep their booth and the area in front of their booth neat and presentable. No booth chairs, tables, or other items are allowed to be placed outside of the booths.