The international Data Mover Challenge (DMC) is an annual competition that aims to bring together experts from industry and academia in a bid to test their software and solutions for transferring huge amounts of research data. DMC seeks to challenge international teams to come up with the most advanced and innovative solutions for data transfer across servers located in various countries that are connected by 100Gbps international research and education networks.

The challenge focuses on optimising point-to-point data transfers between sites – a crucial step forward in advancing research collaboration and sharing. Participants from all over the world will compete by deploying the best software tools on Data Transfer Nodes (DTNs) that are set up within existing international networks across the globe.

The DMC competition is a key event of the SupercomputingAsia (SCA) conference series. Co-organised by the HPC Centres from Australia, Japan and Singapore, SCA is an annual international conference that encompasses an umbrella of notable supercomputing events with the key objective of promoting a vibrant and relevant HPC ecosystem in Asia. DMC 2021 was launched on 3 March 2021 at SCA21.

Eligibility

This Data Mover Challenge is open to all organisations, companies, research institutions, academia, researchers, post-graduate students and undergraduate students.

Representatives of all partnering organisations for the challenge shall not participate as team members for this competition.

Registration will close on 30 June 2021

The Challenge

DMC 2021 will run from 1 August to 31 October 2021.

Participating teams will be given 5 days to deploy and run data transfer tests based on given scenarios:

  • 3 days to set up software: Monday SGT (UTC+8) 0000Hrs – Wednesday SGT (UTC+8) 2359Hrs
  • 2 days to run the data transfer and demonstrate software to judges: Thursday SGT (UTC+8) 0000Hrs – Friday SGT (UTC+8) 2359Hrs (Statistics and results will be captured)

The winning team will be announced at the SupercomputingAsia 2022 (SCA22) Conference in March 2022 in Singapore. The winning team’s leader will be invited to attend SupercomputingAsia 2022 (SCA22) from 1-3 Mar 2022 in Singapore for an award presentation and solution showcase*.

Judging Panel

The competitors will be assessed and selected by an international panel of judges comprising domain experts and professionals in the field of networking and data transfer. Members of the judging panel for DMC21 include:

  • Andrew Howard, Cloud Systems Manager, National Computational Infrastructure (NCI), Australia (Chief Judge)
  • Cees de Laat, Professor, Informatics Institute, Faculty of Science, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  • Eric Pouyoul, Network Engineer, Energy Science Network (ESnet), USA
  • Francis Lee Bu Sung, Associate Professor, School of Computer Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore
  • Lawrence Wong, Emeritus Professor, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore
  • Tim Chown, Network Development Manager, Jisc, UK

Winners

Participants

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

For more information about DMC21, please contact [email protected].

*Award presentation and solution showcase may be done virtually depending on prevailing pandemic circumstances.