Foreword by Dr Happy Sithole, Director: CHPC

The Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) has a vision to provide South African researchers with world-class facilities and make our country a destination for high-end computing within the southern hemisphere. This year has seen a significant advancement towards this vision and consolidates the efforts put into developing the CHPC.

The Phase II building renovations were completed and put the centre amongst the best facilities in terms of green computing. The CHPC is thus proud to provide resources with high availability and reliability to researchers. On 8 September, the Minister of Science and Technology, Mrs Naledi Pandor, launched the CHPC's SUN Microsystems constellation - the fastest supercomputer in Africa and amongst the fastest TOP500 in the world. The machine is made up of the latest processing units with a state-of-the-art on-rack cooling system. Currently, the machine is undergoing final stress tests and will soon be available to the general user community, followed by a workshop on code porting.

Development of human capital is central to ensuring that users are well trained and can effectively utilise the facilities provided. To this end, our intensive training programme covered a number of courses, ranging from an introduction to high performance computing (HPC) to the intricate details of multi-core programming, which were offered to a wider user community. These courses are presented by our local scientists and some of the most renowned scientists from all over the world. To complement these efforts, strategic collaborations have been developed with other centres world-wide.

The CHPC Annual Meeting this year will see South Africa welcoming scientists in HPC computing from around the world to its shores. These are opportunities that can only make South Africa grow in the field of HPC and enhance our reputation among the best in the world.

We always enjoy being of service to our clients and trust you will find value in this publication.

With best wishes
Dr Happy Sithole