With the HPL/HPCG challenge in the rear-view mirror, it’s time to meet the HPE mentors who made it happen.

Most of the mentor crew have taken on the task in past years, but have a new coordinator this year, Elizabeth Reeve, who did a great job. The only place where she didn’t excel was in the mentor interview – she was sick, so I can’t hold that against her.

As usual, HPE put up two clusters, a four node and two node system for the students to share as they slugged out LINPACK and HPCG runs. One difference this year vs past years is that the students weren’t on campus together due to the early start of the 2025 event.

So they met online, hashed it out, and started working on the problems earlier this year than in past years. It seems like the “LINPACK Trap” we’ve seen before didn’t happen this time. The usual pattern in this first challenge is for students to start with LINPACK, make it run, then make it scale, and then get all wrapped up in making it perform better. As the clock ticks down to their final submission deadline, they then realize that they haven’t done much with HPCG…oh noooo!!! But in 2025, my constant harping on this seems to have paid off, as we find from our chalk talk with HPE.

We have veterans Chris Marsh, Dennis Molly, and Gordon Bates in the interview. There are a few things that shine through every time we talk to a mentor team, as you’ll see in the interview below. The first is how much time and effort they devote to teaching the kids the basics of using a supercomputer and making sure they get as much as possible out of the experience. The second is that they really enjoy this themselves, which is always a surprise to me, although it shouldn’t be after five years of it.

They did a fantastic job, as usual, in easing the students into their first real HPC experience. We had a great start to the competition but have a long ways to go.

Next up for the students is a week off, then a new event, the HPC Crash Course that will be capped by a rigorous exam. More on that in our next installment, plus our traditional team interviews…stay tuned….