Mission & Objectives

The main objectives of the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) are to enable South Africa to become globally competitive and to accelerate Africa's socio-economic upliftment through the effective application of high-end cyberinfrastructure.

These objectives should be supported by relevant advanced eResearch techniques in the Research and Development (R&D) pipeline for all academic and industrial divisions in South Africa - Science, Engineering, Technology, Medicine, Finance and Humanities.

The CHPC aims to enhance significant research, address grand challenges, and grow computational research into a viable mode alongside experiment and theory across all academic disciplines.

CHPC Objectives

The Vision of the CHPC is planned to be achieved in 5 years, with the start-up phase being finalized in the next 2 years, and the following 3 years focusing on consolidation and growth. Targets and measures will be organized within DST's basket-of-measures, which include:

• Human Resource Development (such as transformation, Black and Female Scientists, outreach efforts, numbers of M.Sc and PhD students and post-doc fellowships),
• S&T excellence (such as publications in international peer-reviewed journals, hosting an international scientific conference),
• Innovation and Learning (such as peer review and benchmarking as part of a learning process),
• Customers and Stakeholders (such as customer and partner usage of the CHPC, government support),
• Finance and Investment (such as achieving commercial income targets, adherence to budget), and
• Operational excellence (such as world-class project management and research processes).

The CHPC will need to focus on the following key issues on an ongoing basis in order to accomplish its vision:

• Effective governance
• Development of nodes and partnerships with TEI’s, research institutes and industry, locally, nationally, in the rest of Africa, and internationally (particularly with developing countries)
• Human resource development, transformation, capacity development, and training
• Ensuring funding sustainability via government core funding as well as from commercial beneficiaries
• Developing a critical mass in HPC and people
• In partnership mode, do a range of relevant and research projects with impact and visible S&T outcomes
• Provide appropriate support to the nodes and partners
• S&T excellence and an effective research plan
• On an ongoing basis ensure (with government and SANReN support), sufficient and affordable bandwidth
• Develop and implement cutting-edge computational tools
• Effective and focused marketing, including contributing to public understanding of S&T

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