Note: This is a tentative environment description. The chosen labs may change depending on the number of registered students as the on-site competition gets closer.

The lab computers are dual-book Windows/Mac computers. The particular platform should not play a major role since contestants are allowed to work only with a simple text editor, such as pico, emacs, vi, vim, or TextEdit, a command-line compiler (gcc, g++, and javac), and a Web browser to submit solutions. The Web interface is the same as used in the on-line contest. The TextEdit editor is very similar to Notepad on Windows.

The use of Internet is not allowed, other than for problem submission and to access provided reference material.

The computers are dual-core computers with 4GB of RAM.