Countdown to the 2026 Winter Classic
Our Goals
Attract young new talent from diverse communities to HPC and get them hands on experience with real HPC systems and applications.
Give these highly motivated self-starters skills that will qualify them for intern and full-time positions in the industry.
Showcase their expertise, personalities, and institutions in the Winter Classic Student Cluster Competition.
We're assembling the teams for the 2026 Winter Classic and figure we'll probably end up with 10 or 12 teams from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs). It's mostly returning teams this year, but we could still pull in some entirely new schools as we get closer to the start date. If you're from a HBCU or HSI, there's still time to get in!
All of the 2026 teams (so far) are previous competitors, which is nice to see. And we also have three schools who have multiple teams again this year, which is great since it means that HPC/AI is catching on and becoming a 'thing' on their campus.
Look at all the Santa Cruz slugs out there! It's not that much of a surprise to see two Santa Cruz teams, they've been competing in not only the Winter Classic, but also the virtual SC and ISC competitions. But that third team? The Turbo Slugs? That's an all graduate student (PhD's I think) who wanted in the game. Due to competition rules, each grad student counts for two undergrads, so they're a team of three, but with a lot of experience and maybe something to prove? We'll see what happens.
The first challenge for the students will start on February second when they face the grueling HPC Crash Course. During that week, they'll be studying up on HPC concepts and real life usage, courtesy of The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. Then an exam. (There's always an exam, right?)
After that, the students will put that knowledge to the test with challenges from four different mentors (maybe five this year.)
At the end of the competition, students will have learned how to build, run, profile, and optimize five or six different HPC/AI workloads on different supercomputers provided by the mentor organizations (listed below.).
Click on a logo to meet a particular team. Right now, the team profiles are empty, but we'll get info in therm as soon as we get it. For extra credit, meet them all!
Mentors fulfill a vital role in the Winter Classic Cluster Competition. Teams run their HPC benchmarks and applications on clusters in the mentor data centers, giving the students the rare chance to use a real-life HPC system. Mentors select the application that teams will run in the mentor data center. Mentors teach the team about the application, how to build and run it, how to profile it, and give the teams tips and tricks on application optimization.
Click on a logo above and take a look at what they've done for the students in this competition.
Without our sponsors, there wouldn’t be a 2025 Winter Classic Cluster Competition, it’s as simple as that. We’re grateful for their generous support. Sponsors also actively recruit student participants for internship and full-time career positions.
Give their logos a click to see what they're up to in HPC...
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Olds Research
About the Organizers
Dan Olds started following student cluster competitions in 2010 and rapidly became a big fan. Over the years, he has covered every major competition, publishing hundreds of articles and videos in The Register, InsideHPC, and HPCwire.
Olds founded the Winter Classic Invitational Student Cluster Competition in 2020, with the first test event taking place in early 2021. In 2022, he changed the formula for student cluster competitions by bringing in HPC/AI expert organizations to train the student teams as well as provide them with cluster access. The result is a competition that gives students the real-world HPC/AI experience they need to land great jobs in our industry.
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