A team of talented undergraduates has secured the Group Competition Award and First Prize in the ASC24 Student Supercomputer Challenge. This achievement highlights the exceptional skills and dedication of the team members.
The team consisted of the following members:
Team Advisor |
Dr SHI Jieming |
Assistant Professor, COMP |
Team Leader |
ZHANG Haolin |
Year 3 student, COMP |
Team Member |
BAO Yucheng |
Year 3 student, COMP |
Team Member |
CHEN Junru |
Year 3 student, COMP |
Team Member |
SUN Hansong |
Year 1 student, COMP |
Team Member |
ZHAO Qingsen |
Year 3 student, ABCT |
Observer |
FU Guanhe |
Year 1 student, COMP |
The ASC24 preliminaries included two computational tasks: Large Language Model (LLM) Inference Optimization and Seepage Numerical Simulation. In the LLM Inference Optimization Challenge, the teams were tasked with building and refining inference engines using the popular open-source LLM, LLaMA2. Their objective was to achieve high-throughput inference on provided sample datasets. Out of over 300 participating teams, the PolyU team, along with 24 other teams, advanced to the finals and were awarded the First Prize.
In the finals, the students were randomly divided into five groups, with each group containing representatives from five universities. The PolyU team collaborated with Shanghai University, the Southern University of Science and Technology, Qilu University of Technology, and Southwest Petroleum University to achieve impressive optimisation of ParaSeis, demonstrating their teamwork and dedication.
Reflecting on their journey, team leader ZHANG Haolin shared the team's remarkable progress despite their limited prior experience in the field and resources. They diligently designed their clusters, optimised the 70B LLAMA model, and tackled an oil extraction challenge that demanded interdisciplinary expertise. Their efforts included deciphering an undocumented C++ project, understanding its components and underlying mathematical operations, and ultimately enhancing its performance. Through perseverance and a deep passion for engineering, the team learned and achieved success. This competition was more than a test of their technical skills—it was a testament to their dedication to computer science. They embraced the challenge and felt honoured to have their efforts recognised with the award and group competition prize.