1 Fusionopolis Way, Connexis South, #17-01
Singapore 138632
Email: contact@nscc.sg
Reg. No. 2007208292

Data Mover Challenge 2020 (DMC20) – WINNERS Announced!
This year’s challenge saw four international teams emerge with accolades fordeveloping uniquely innovative solutions for specific components, each of which are
crucial in ensuring the seamless transfer of large amounts of research data across theglobe.

Singapore 26 February 2020 - Moving data is an essential foundation of national and global science.
The Data Mover Challenge (DMC) is an annual competition that is organised by the NationalSupercomputing Centre (NSCC) Singapore and brings together experts from industry and academia,to push the envelope in high speed, big data transfer capabilities across vast distances. Data Transfer
Nodes (DTNs) for DMC20 connected by 100Gbps international research and education networks were
set up globally in Singapore, Australia, Europe, USA, South Korea and Japan.
The DMC20 competition attracted seven (7) international teams from USA, Europe, Japan, Taiwan,Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and South Korea (list of participants can be found at www.scasia.org/data-mover-challenge-2020/) from both the public and private sectors. The challenge focusedon optimising point-to-point data transfers between sites – a crucial step forward in advancing researchcollaboration and sharing. DMC20 tested the expertise and skills of each of the teams to produce thebest solutions for data transfer.
After extensive deliberations and reviews, the panel of international judges decided that there would
not be a single overall winner for DMC20. They have instead decided to present not one but four
awards to the teams that had shown unique and innovative solutions in various areas. Each of thespecific areas are crucial components needed to optimise transfer of huge amounts of data over great
distances.

NSCC.SG1

1 Fusionopolis Way, Connexis South, #17-01
Singapore 138632
Email: contact@nscc.sg
Reg. No. 2007208292

Congratulations to all the winning teams!*TeamGauss Centre forSupercomputing (GCS)
e.V.

Country
GermanyAward Name
Most SystemicApproach
Award

iCAIR / Starlight

USA

Best Speed &Science
Integration
Award

Japan Aerospace
Exploration Agency(JAXA) / National
Institute of Information
and Communications
Technology (NICT)
National Institute ofInformatics (NII)Japan

Experimental
ExcellenceAwardJapanMostInnovative &Novelty Award

Citation
GCS enhanced the DTN service using an
under the hood feature to optimize datatransfer performance using UFTP
integrating with various application received
the Most Systemic Approach Award
Team iCAIR / Starlight’s DTN-as-a-Service
solution produced high performance data
access with NVMe over Fabric with strong
integration with Jupyter notebooks received
the Best Speed and Science IntegrationAward
JAXA / NICT’s well engineered HCP tool
based on their original high performanceflexible protocol with GUI integration
produced a wide set of tests in challenging
environments received the Experimental
Excellence Award
Team NII’s solution of MMCFTP to transfer
datasets and accelerate automatic archiving
and de-archiving of small files received theMost Innovative & Novelty Award

DMC20 Judging Panel
The awardees were 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
DMC20 are listed below.
Name
Andrew Howard
Cees de Laat

Eric Pouyoul
Francis Lee BuSung
Lawrence Wong

Tim Chown

NSCC.SGDesignation & Organisation
Cloud Systems Manager,
National Computational Infrastructure (NCI)
Professor,
Informatics Institute, Faculty of Science,
University of Amsterdam
Network Engineer,
Energy Science Network (ESnet)

Country
Australia

Panel
Chief Judge

TheNetherlands

Judge

USA

Judge

Associate Professor,
School of Computer Science and Engineering,
Nanyang Technological University (NTU)
Emeritus Professor,
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering,
National University of Singapore (NUS)
Network Development Manager,
Jisc

Singapore

Judge

Singapore

Judge

UK

Judge

2

1 Fusionopolis Way, Connexis South, #17-01
Singapore 138632
Email: contact@nscc.sg
Reg. No. 2007208292

For more about the Data Mover Challenge 2020 (DMC20), the participants and the supportingpartners, please visit www.sc-asia.org/data-mover-challenge-2020/*Note – In light of the cancellation of the SupercomputingAsia 2020 (SCA20) conference, theannouncement of the winners and the DMC20 Awards Ceremony, which was scheduled to be held on
26 February in Singapore will not be proceeding. The organisers will arrange to present the Awards
separately to the winning teams.

For further information, contact:
Mr Eugene Low
Marketing & Engagements
NSCC Singapore(65) 6714 9462
eugene@nscc.sg
National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Singapore
www.nscc.sg

NSCC.SG3