A Memorable Experience in My Life

In the summer of 2007, some of my friends and I participated in a nationwide computing competition, the High-Performance Computing Game of Matrix Computation, hosted by the National Center for High-Performance Computing. There were 53 teams in the game. The competitors were required to attend a training camp and finish a program in one month, and the most efficient program won the game. Therefore, we first went to Hsinchu for the training camp, where we learned about the detailed competition rules, the tools we could use, and some tips to develop a speedy program. After the camp, we began reading papers, implementing algorithms, experimenting, and starting over. During the month, a lot of days I did not sleep more than 4 hours because I had to take care of a part-time job and the game, and so did my friends. As we got closer to the terminating day, we slept less, even some days we stayed awake till the golden wheel slanted behind the mountains and started shining. We separately developed our algorithms, merged them, and screamed and enjoyed the joy when we found the new version was faster than its previous version by seconds or minutes. Finally, we did not have good luck though. We did not get the prize since we uploaded our final program and the report to the wrong place. However, our program was as good as the winners’ and that was a memorable experience, indeed.