The Stony Brook Seawolves are one of two U.S. teams competing in the ISC 2012 Student Cluster Competition in Hamburg this week. This isn’t the first time the school has participated in a contest like this, but it’s probably their longest road trip in terms of distance and culture (although NYC to Portland, Oregon is a close second).

Stony Brook (profile here) is bringing the fastest processors and the most cores to the competition, but they’re running a different software stack than the others. During the filming of our introductory video, the team was wrestling with some problems that threatened to force them  – I think – to essentially rebuild their cluster software stack. We’ll see if they can get it together in time to put up a good fight for the LINPACK crown or, failing that, come back strong on the application portion of the contest.

The short video below gives you a feel for the team and how they’re dealing with their early adversity.