BEAR Challenge 2022

Interested in finding out more about High Performance Computing?

We're back! Following a two year break, the BEAR Challenge 2022 is being run again by Advanced Research Computing at the University of Birmingham to allow undergraduate and taught Masters students to experience using a High Performance Computing (HPC) system. We're looking for teams of 5 students to take part in a series of challenges held over three days, which will see you getting dedicated access to resource within Baskerville, the University's Tier 2, national supercomputer with 184 GPU’s.

We’ll start the Challenge off with a crash course in how to use Baskerville followed by several challenges to complete, with each member of the highest scoring team at the end of the three days winning a prize (courtesy of Lenovo). The challenges will include data science and artificial intelligence tasks using Baskerville’s state of the art GPU’s. We want to challenge you and for you to learn about High Performance Computing (HPC) systems and techniques!

The challenges will be run in conjunction with industry experts from some of the leading technology companies in the HPC field, including Lenovo and NVIDIA, several members of Birmingham’s Advanced Research Computing team plus the lead Academic for our Baskerville Tier-2 HPC system, Prof Iain Styles. We will also have a talk from Simon Thompson (Senior Manager, HPC Storage and Performance, Lenovo Worldwide HPC Customer Solutions) describing careers in HPC.

So, if you are interested in finding out more about High Performance Computing and the career possibilities available, then the BEAR Challenge is for you!

Who is it for?

Each team should be made up of 5 students from the University of Birmingham, you should be an undergraduate or Masters student at the University.

If you are not able to assemble a team of 5, we have in the past combined smaller groups so it is still worth registering if you cannot find all 4 other interested team members.

Student team members should have a good working knowledge of using Python plus at least one member of your team should have experience using a Linux command line.

To register, you will need to know the name, email address, year and course of each team member, please use the University of Birmingham email address as we will need to verify and register the username for use on the HPC systems.

If the Challenge is oversubscribed, the teams will be selected via a random draw.

When is it taking place?

BEAR Challenge is taking place over the three consecutive days of Tuesday 21st to Thursday 23rd June. Lunch will be provided each day.

Where is it taking place?

We're running the BEAR Challenge on campus, we'll be providing more details on location once teams are registered.

What does my team need?

Each team will need a team leader who will be responsible for registering their team. Each team member should bring their own laptop to be able to connect remotely to Baskerville to complete the challenges.

If you have any questions about the Challenge, please contact bearinfo@contacts.bham.ac.uk

The deadline for registration is midnight on Sunday 12th June so make sure you sign up by then!