The Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC) and CoderDojo have joined forces to launch a coding competition entitled ‘Are you a Super Coder?’
The competition funded by Science Foundation Ireland’s (SFI) Discover Science & Engineering is open to all primary and secondary level students in Ireland.
The aim is to promote the concept of high performance computing, and parallel programming in particular.
“CoderDojo is delighted that Irish ninja code kids will be able to get the opportunity to work with the new Irish supercomputer as big data processing is a core technology for all our future and present benefit,” said Bill Liao, CoderDojo co-founder.
High performance challenge
The challenge for the students is to implement photography filters commonly found in modern photo editing software. The first is a mirroring effect where a new image is created such that the right hand side is a mirror of the left.
The second is a little more involved and distorts the image using a predefined algorithm. The site introduces image processing by providing code to convert colour images into grayscale and also apply a Gaussian blur.
The site also highlights good software development skills with the use of Makefiles, requirements of documentation and the idea of keeping code simple and maintainable.
Winners of the first phase of the competition will have the opportunity to access the new Irish supercomputer during a special Science Week event. Further details of the competition can be found here
A new short video produced by ICHEC that introduces parallel programming and its utility in many industries including F1 racing, animation, weather forecasting can be found here
Coding kid image via Shutterstock
