BEIJING: The 2026 ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge (ASC26) was officially launched in Beijing recently. The kickoff event brought together leading experts in high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI), along with faculty and student representatives from participating institutions. This year, ASC26 has attracted more than 300 student teams from universities and colleges across Chinese mainland, the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, and Macao, underscoring the competition’s international reach and its vital role in cultivating the next generation of supercomputing leaders.

ASC26 continues its established Preliminary Round + Finals competition framework, inviting students to engage deeply with authentic, real-world computing challenges that bridge theory and practice. During the Preliminary Round, participating teams design complete HPC clusters, optimize applications, and deliver innovative technical proposals. Top-performing teams will advance to the on-site Finals at Wuxi University from May 16 to 20, 2026, where students will demonstrate their skills, teamwork, and innovation in a high-intensity, hands-on competition environment.

To inspire students to push the boundaries of artificial intelligence and scientific computing, the ASC26 Preliminary Round introduces two flagship applications: Robotic Embodied Intelligence and Numerical Simulation of Gravitational Waves.

• Robotics embodied intelligence is a frontier of artificial intelligence, enabling robots to learn, plan, and act through human-like mental rehearsal powered by world models. By generating high-dimensional, physically realistic video streams, these robots improve planning and learning abilities within simulation environments. The ASC26 Embodied Intelligence Challenge introduces UnifoLM-WMA-0, calling on student teams to optimize inference performance under defined scenarios and instructions while preserving video quality and physical realism. This challenge bridges cutting-edge research and real-world deployment, empowering students to transition embodied intelligence from the lab into practice.
• From humanity’s first detection of gravitational waves in 2015, to the Nobel Prize recognition in 2017, our view of the universe keeps expanding. The ASC26 Numerical Simulation of Gravitational Waves Challenge invites students to explore these astrophysics frontiers using AMSS NCKU, a cutting-edge numerical relativity code. Participants will carry out numerical relativity simulations of binary black hole mergers, solving the Einstein field equations on advanced computing platforms. The challenge emphasizes optimizing numerical accuracy, stability, and parallel scalability under system constraints, to model strong-field spacetime dynamics and the generation of gravitational-wave signals.

As the world’s largest and most demanding student supercomputing competition, ASC26 presents frontier, high-complexity applications that seamlessly integrate artificial intelligence with core scientific and engineering disciplines. Through intensive, hands-on challenges, participating students strengthen essential capabilities in problem formulation, modeling, system and solution design, and the practical deployment of AI tools, laying a strong foundation for their development as the next generation of innovators and researchers in science and technology.

Jack Dongarra, Chair of the ASC Advisory Committee, Turing Award laureate, and Emeritus Professor at the University of Tennessee, stated: "We are living in a truly remarkable time of technological change. The deep integration of artificial intelligence and supercomputing is not only advancing science and industry, but is also opening new opportunities for young students. The ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge is a unique platform where you can develop skills, collaborate with peers from around the world, and prepare yourselves to become the next generation of leaders in supercomputing and AI."

Cao Guangxi, Vice President of Wuxi University, stated: "We look forward to further promoting the two-way integration of supercomputing and AI computing in higher education and industrial practice through hosting the ASC26 Finals, building an international stage for young students from around the world to showcase technical strength and exchange frontier ideas, and helping them grow into the backbone, driving future scientific and technological innovation."

At the meeting, the ASC announced collaboration with A*STAR Institute of High Performance Computing (A*STAR IHPC), the Beijing–Hong Kong Academic Exchange Centre, and the Zhongguancun Academy × Zhongguancun Institute of Artificial Intelligence. These organizations contribute through avenues such as defining technical challenge topics, helping to equip students with an international outlook and interdisciplinary skills to strengthen the future innovation pipeline.

In parallel, the ASC26 Training Camp was held in Beijing from January 27 to 28. The program featured expert briefings on ASC competition rules, alongside in-depth technical sessions covering key supercomputing topics, such as cluster architecture and optimization, Linux systems, Fortran programming, MPI and OpenMP parallel programming models, AMD CPU architecture roadmaps, and introductory optimization using ROCm. Foundational AI training was also included, together with detailed analyses of the preliminary round challenges and recommended solution approaches, providing participating teams with comprehensive technical guidance for their competition preparation.

About ASC

The ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge serves as an international platform for technical exchange and the development of the next generation of supercomputing talent with broad support from leading experts and institutions across Asia, Europe, and the United States. Through a rigorous, hands-on competitive format, ASC aims to advance academic excellence and practical skills in supercomputing application development and research, positioning high-performance computing as a catalyst for scientific discovery, technological progress, and industrial innovation. Now in its 13th edition, the ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge has engaged tens of thousands of university students from six continents, establishing itself as the world’s largest student supercomputing competition. Learn more about this exciting competition on the official website: http://www.asc-events.net/StudentChallenge/index.html

Fonte: Business Wire