Foreword

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.

Collaboration

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.

MoA paves way for HPC cooperation between Russia and South Africa Representatives of the Research Computing Center of M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University and the CHPC signed a memorandum of agreement (MoA) on 24 June 2009 during the 2009 International Supercomputing Conference (ISC'09) held in Hamburg, Germany.

Workshops: International

CHPC well represented at ISC'09 When the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC'09) event in Hamburg opened its door on 23 September 2009, it welcomed more than 1 650 attendees from all over the world, including several CHPC staff members. The annual International Supercomputing Conference is Europe's leading conference and exhibition on high performance computing, networking and storage.

CHPC researcher chairs session at IHY-Africa/SCINDA workshop Dr Daniel Moeketsi, research scientist at the CHPC, did double duty when he was called upon to chair the session on communications infrastructure for Africa and gave an invited talk at the International Heliosphysical Year (IHY)-Africa/SCINDA workshop held in Livingstone, Zambia in June 2009.

Workshops: Local

OpenFOAM foundation course presented in two provinces The two-day OpenFOAM foundation course, sponsored by the CHPC, was held in Cape Town and Gauteng. The workshops were available to all scientists and engineers, practitioners and professionals, researchers and students working in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) in South Africa.

UKZN postgraduate students exposed to HPC Kevin Colville, a research scientist at the CHPC, has played an important role in exposing postgraduate students from the University of KwaZulu-Natal to high performance computing (HPC).

Course on parallel computing presented by Stanford's Olukotun In a effort to advance high performance computing utilising new forms of parallel computing, the Advanced Computer Engineering Lab (ACELab), in association with the CHPC, hosted Professor Kunle Olukotun of Stanford University for a week-long course in September 2009, entitled 'Parallel computer architecture and programming'.

Education and outreach

A milestone for CHPC's graduates in basic computer hardware and software Graduation day came on 30 May 2009 for the first group of 10 learners in the Western Cape who successfully completed the CHPC's basic computer hardware and software course.

Science Week @ CHPC National Science Week during August 2009 was the ideal occasion to put high performance computing (HPC) right up there in the minds of Cape Town-based learners, along with other wondrous scientific experiences.

Bright boys visit CHPC "Where are the girls?" was the first question CHPC staff asked when 14 Computer Olympiad finalists arrived to be introduced to the centre by Dr Daniel Moeketsi on 28 September 2009. They were very excited and inspired to see the biggest computer in Africa.

Future events

Workshops on high performance computing tools and numerical methods Professor Jack Dongarra, of the electrical engineering and computer science department at the University of Tennessee will deliver a President's lecture at the CSIR on 9 October 2009.

CHPC National Meeting and BELIEF Symposium The CSIR invites participation in its Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) National Meeting 2009 and the 5th BELIEF-II (Bringing Europes eLectronic Infrastructure to Expanding Frontiers - Phase II) Symposium to be held on 7-9 December 2009 at the Sandton International Convention Centre.

Call for proposals: 2010 consortium research projects In the past three years, the CHPC flagship project grants have provided the partnership framework to support the development of several noteworthy research projects. As the results of this fruitful partnership, the projects have made significant progress in fulfilling their research missions.