Mrs Pandor receives a plaque from Sun Microsystems's vice-president Marc Hamiliton, together with (from left) Dr Khomotso Khanyago (CSIR); Dr Phil Mjwara (director-general: DST); Dr Happy Sithole (director: CHPC); Dr Sibusiso Sibisi (CEO: CSIR); Kagiso Chikane (centre manager: Meraka Institute); Dr Phuti Ngoepe (CSIR Fellow from the University of Limpopo) and Professor Colin Wright (CSIR's Meraka Institute)
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CHPC launches phase 2 of its operations
The long-anticipated launch of the CHPC's Phase 2 on 8 September at its offices in Rosebank represents a milestone in the unfolding history of supercomputing in South Africa. The implementation of a hybrid architecture solution provides an estimated 27 teraflops of computing power and puts the system among the Top 500 supercomputers in the world.
It represents the outcome of a significant investment by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) in state-of-the-art equipment to ensure unlimited processing power, bandwidth and storage.
Guest of honour at this event, Mrs Naledi Pandor, Minister of Science and Technology, emphasised the need for South Africa to use cutting-edge technology "to compete with the rest of the world, while taking a leading role in Africa. We need to out-compute in order to out-compete."
She iterated support by government for the other pillars of the national cyberinfrastructure initiative, such as the South African National Research Network and the SA National Compute Grid, as well as the Very Large Datasets storage and information retrieval sub-initiative.
Value from these initiatives would be seen in the research and development of in-house technology for supercomputing, to integration of systems and innovative utilisation of platforms to address a range of challenges. She cited the example of the bid for Square Kilometre Array, which required a "demonstrated ability" to capture, process and disseminate data to the rest of the world "in near real-time". This required "functional cyberinfrastructure", notably supercomputing, high-speed networks, secure and high-performance storage, and competent personnel.
Dr Happy Sithole, director of the CHPC, emphasised the potential of HPC in supporting "a new way of scientific investigation". He applauded the contributions by members of the broader CHPC community, in particular its special interest groups, in promoting the use of the facility to maximum capacity and in support of common challenges. He also emphasised the value of partnerships - both local and international - to promote the benefits of supercomputing.
The event brought together stakeholders, partners and researchers to celebrate the installation and commissioning of the Sun Microsystems hybrid supercomputer, one of a handful of these machines on six continents. Its innovative water-cooling system ensures a saving of 25% power usage.
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