Engineers Only: GPU Hackathon – Fine-Tune DeepSeek + Master Chess 🇦🇺

​STRONG COMPUTE GPU HACKATHON

​For Engineers & AI Researchers who are comfortable with PyTorch.

​Our goal is to offer the best platform to build and train models at cluster scale. Come on over, light up some clusters, have a blast and let us know what you love and what needs work. 

​​Strong Compute’s Instant Super Computer (ISC) is designed to be the easiest way to get started on multinode training. You’ll be up and running in an hour.

​Engineers only. All code. Recruiters/Slidegineers/Marketers etc. need not apply.

​All applicants will be vetted for technical fit before being approved to attend.

​Choose from one of the following hacks to compete in over the weekend.

​Competition A: DEEPSEEK Fine Tuning

​DeepSeek has landed. Come build the next demonstration of leaner meaner reasoning models dominating the big guys.

​Strong Compute will provide the DeepSeek distillation model weights at your fingertips, and a bunch of GPUs to fine tune on. Over to you!

​Fine-tune a DeepSeek reasoning model on your dataset and show us what it can do. The most impressive demo wins.

​​Details:

• ​​Challenge: Fine-tune a DeepSeek model on your dataset.

• ​​Resources: DeepSeek model variant weights downloaded ahead of time, and a demonstration of how to fine-tune on Strong Compute.

  • ​DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-1.5B

  • ​DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-7B

  • ​DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-8B

  • ​DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B

  • ​DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-32B

  • ​DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-70B

• ​​Compute: Dedicated GPU access via Strong Compute’s ISC

• ​​Judging: Qualitative assessment of how far you have pushed DeepSeek beyond the stock model. Ie. what can your fine tuned version do that the stock model can’t.

​Competition B: ​Mega Chess Hackathon Overview:

​Now in it’s 7th season. Our first hackathons had models a beginner could beat, our most recent hackathons hit ~2000ELO in just a weekend of training from scratch.

​Train AI Chess bots on GPUs in SF.

​​Compete to build the best chess-playing AI with access to 48 GPU clusters and explore models, datasets, and hyperparameters.

​​Details:

• ​​Challenge: Train a deep neural network to evaluate chess moves based on game history and board states.

• ​​Resources: StockFish-evaluated board states, historic game PGNs, and code examples.

• ​​Compute: Dedicated GPU access via Strong Compute’s ISC

• ​​Judging: Tournament-style model face-off.

​​Accepted participants will get the full task, dataset, and model specifics as soon as they are accepted. Register today to get a head start!

​​Participant Requirements:

• ​​Experience with PyTorch and cluster training is preferred but not mandatory.

• ​​Skills in large-scale clusters (64+ GPUs) are highly valued.

• ​​Teams of 1 to 3 members are allowed. Include your team members’ names when registering. Approved participants will receive a link to our Discord competition channel.

​Prize:

• ​Prize: $2.5K-$25K open source research compute grant* for each competition.

  • ​1 prize for Deep Seek

  • ​1 prize for Chess

    • ​For Chess, if a veteran (past attendee) is the winner, the prize will be $1K-10K, with $2.5K-25K for the highest ranked novice (first time attendee).

​​Locations:

• ​Artarmon, NSW: Venue details will be shared upon successful application.

​​🗓️ Event Schedule:

​Monday, 17th Feb 2025 onwards:

• ​Ad-hoc onboarding sessions offered

• ​Participants can get demo credits to make a head start

​Saturday, 22nd Feb 2025:

• ​1:00 pm: Arrive. Drinks, snacks + networking

• ​2:00 pm: Set-up, onboarding, test training run + inference

• ​2:30 pm: Competition begins 🎉

• ​6:30 pm: Dinner

• ​Late: Hacking

​Sunday, 23rd Feb 2025:

• ​9:00 am: Day two start, breakfast

• ​11:30 am: Final submissions 📝

• ​1:00 pm: Lunch

• ​1:30 pm: Competition begins

• ​3:30 pm: Wrap-up

​​Strong Compute

​​Strong Compute provides infrastructure management capability for rapid artificial intelligence development.

​​P.S. We're hiring and this is a great way for us to get to know each other. Open roles: https://jobs.lever.co/strongcompute

​​Supported by community partner:
Build Club: the home for top AI engineers in APAC

​​*Refer to our research grants for requirements.