The first AI4E thousand-card cluster in the country makes its national competition debut! Hygon DCU serves as the computing power foundation: 160 universities and 1,900 participants compete on the same stage.

The 2026 National College Student Computer System Capability Competition - Intelligent Computing Innovation Design Competition (Pioneer Cup) finals and award ceremony concluded at Tongji University. The competition attracted over 1,900 students from 160 universities nationwide, forming more than 500 participating teams.

The biggest highlight of this edition was the debut of the nation's first AI4E (Engineering Intelligence) domestic thousand-card engineering computing cluster in a real-world competition setting.

The cluster, jointly built by Hygon Information and Tongji University in June this year, marks the first time domestic computing power has served university education and research in a dedicated engineering form. Powered by Hygon DCU as the core computing foundation and adopting a super-intelligent fusion architecture, the cluster can simultaneously handle high-performance computing and AI training/inference tasks.

Leveraging Hygon's self-developed software stack, the cluster is fully compatible with mainstream large models and AI development frameworks, and incorporates chip-level security protection technology.

During this competition, the cluster provided end-to-end computing support for two competition tracks: optimization of Qwen large model inference services and optimization of weather model inference deployment. Participating teams completed solution tuning and real-world validation in scenarios involving large model inference and scientific intelligence.

Hygon Information stated it will continue refining dedicated computing solutions for engineering education and research scenarios, driving domestic computing power from "usable" to "excellent."

This competition established a complete industry-education integration pathway connecting domestic chips, computing infrastructure, national competitions, and innovative talent cultivation.