In late August, the ICPC hosted its first ICPC Challenge Championship powered by Huawei. Qualification for this event was earned through good placement in ICPC challenges held on Codeforces. Two students from ETH were invited to participate in the championship. Bernhard qualified by achieving second prize in the contest “Topology-Aware VM Placement”. Konstantin received an invitation as a coach and received an award for Outstanding Mentorship for his guidance to the ETH teams in the ICPC world finals.
The championship, held at Huawei’s headquarters in Shenzhen, China, brought together 58 contestants from around the world. The challenge focused on “Buffer Sharing and Pre-allocation for Multi-tenant Databases”, with Bernhard ranking 24th. Aside from the competition, participants enjoyed various activities such as a tour of Huawei’s campus & factories, as well as a meeting with Huawei’s CEO and founder Ren Zhengfei. Minutes of the meeting can be found here.
For those interested in upcoming ICPC challenges, announcements and details are regularly posted on Codeforces. These challenges differ from traditional ICPC contests, emphasizing a single optimization problem and are open to participants with no age or university restrictions.
Further Information on the ICPC Challenge Championship can be found here.