The SCC marathon of 2010 is over. The final results were turned in Wednesday evening, the data examined by expert judges, and winners were announced at the SC10 awards luncheon on Thursday afternoon. Unfortunately, I had to travel to another meeting and couldn’t attend (or film) the ceremony – which leaves quite a hole in my wall-to-wall coverage.

I’m sorry I missed it. These kids worked hard, and I would have really enjoyed seeing how it all ended and seeing the winning teams get their proper recognition. Next year, I’ll definitely be there. That said, on to the results…

First, the highest LINPACK score was turned in by the University of Texas, Austin. They were the first team in SCC history to achieve teraflop performance with their 1.07 LINPACK result. While they’re the first team in the SCC Teraflop Club, they aren’t alone. Louisiana State and National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) from Taiwan also topped the TFlop barrier.

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One of the most interesting aspects of the Student Cluster Competition is the way it stresses the humans even more than the hardware. The students have 46 hours to run as many of the benchmarks as possible, so they man their equipment around the clock in order to maximize their throughput.

The accompanying videos were taken early Wednesday morning, about 15 hours before their final results were due. This was the second and last night of the competition. Team moods were mostly quiet and subdued. The fatigue was showing on everyone, including me, as I asked the same questions over and over again. Despite my barely coherent interview technique, we learn more about the teams, their strategies, and the nature of the challenge.

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Back in the day, when I first started attending industry trade shows, I was always surprised by the range and number of smallish players competing head-on against much larger, industry-leading companies. (Incidentally, at the first trade show I attended, the wheel edged out fire as the most disruptive technology on the floor.)

I used to wonder how these firms survived what must be withering competition from the corporate titans who seem to have all the cards stacked in their favor. The big guys have name recognition and lots of different products, with big sales forces and even larger marketing budgets.

What I learned over the years is that bigger ain’t necessarily better – at least not in every situation. The smaller companies survive and even thrive by catering to important niches in the market and delivering the right product faster than the big guys.

At SC10, I’m exploring this topic by spending some time with Appro, a second-tier HPC vendor that competes day in and day out with IBM, HP, Cray, SGI, and Dell in the HPC arena.

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Sunday at the Student Cluster Competition (SCC) at SC10 in New Orleans… we stop in at the Stony Brook booth to meet the team and see what they’ve brought with them. They introduced us to their cluster, dubbed the “Bear-O-Dactyl.” It’s a combination bear and pterodactyl – but I’ll let them explain the reasoning behind the nickname.

Texas is at SC10 with what looks to me to be the most elaborate booth of the SCC competition – at least in terms of artwork and theme. Their booth is festooned (or at least half-festooned) with “TACC to the Future” posters that play off the “Back to the Future” movies from the 1980s. TACC (Texas Advanced Computing Center) is the lead technical (and probably spiritual) advisor to the Longhorn team.

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Polite, subdued, and with an air of confidence and competence, the NTHU (National Tsing Hua University) team from Taiwan quietly went about their business during the Student Cluster Competition prep time on Sunday.

They were all smiles to the people passing by, but all business in terms of HPC clustering. It’s an experienced institution that’s fielded two teams in the past. But this team is new to both SCC and HPC, which is why they’ve been training with veterans from past teams.

The Russian team from the Nizhni Novgorod National Research University exuded a quiet confidence as they prepared for the competition on Sunday. Despite the challenges of traveling great distances, the language and cultural differences, and last-minute hardware tweaking, they are composed and ready for whatever the SCC will throw them.

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What first struck me when I came upon the Purdue booth at the Student Cluster Competition was the quiet. At the other booths students were talking, tweaking systems, eating, and doing the typical stuff you’d associate with this kind of event.

Not the same picture at the Purdue booth. I’ve spent considerable time wandering around observing (and probably annoying) the various teams. All I’ve seen at the home of the Boilermakers is heads-down intensity. They don’t talk much. I haven’t heard a laugh yet, but thought that I might have seen a smile – it was so fleeting that I couldn’t be sure.

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Another first-time competitor is the team from Louisiana State University (LSU). They’re not located right in New Orleans, but at only 80 miles or so away, they have a definite home-team feel.

The Colorado team is no stranger to these competitions. They’ve been here before – four times before. While they’ve seen some success, winning the LINPACK crown (no actual crown), they’ve never won the big trophy (there isn’t any trophy of any size).