DST promotes super computing

Johannesburg, 11 Sept 2009

The Department of Science and Technology (DST) will continue to support the development of cyber infrastructure to guarantee excellence in science, engineering and technology research, it says.

Minister Naledi Pandor says the department`s interventions in the Centre of High Performance Computing (CHPC) will ensure unlimited processing power, bandwidth and storage.

The centre recently announced the implementation of a hybrid architecture solution, which would provide an estimated 27 Teraflops of computing power.

"This is proof of our intention to provide relevant state-of-the-art equipment for cutting-edge technology and 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 notes.

The centre was opened in 2007 and aims to build capacity and training to support researchers in various scientific domains, including those relevant to socio-economic challenges like diseases, climate change and energy security. The CHPC is funded by the DST and managed by the Meraka Institute, along with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research.

She adds that government needs to link infrastructure initiatives with a strategy for developing in-house technology in areas from supercomputer components and software development, to the integration of systems and innovative utilisation of platforms.

"I am certain that, in the next few years, there will be substantial progress in this direction, and I confidently expect our researchers to put SA on the map, while helping our country overcome the many socioeconomic challenges it faces."

Great spin-offs

The department would continue to support programmes, such as the South African National Research Network (Sanren) and the Very Large Database, which complement the CHPC, she adds.

The Sanren is a high-speed network intended to connect research councils, research institutes within statutory bodies, government departments and universities throughout the country. The very large database creates large databases in areas of environmental and climate change modelling, bio-informatics, medical sciences and astronomy.

Pandor says these initiatives indicate the department is moving in the right direction, as the country could expect much more value from these initiatives.

"A successful bid for the Square Kilometre Array depends on our demonstrated ability to capture and process the data from the radio telescope, and to disseminate it to the rest of the world in near real-time. We`ll not be able to do this without functional cyber-infrastructure in the form of high-performance computing, high-speed networks, secure and high-performance storage, and competent personnel," she explains.

The minister says the DST has achieved specific country-to-country cooperation agreements in cyber infrastructure with a number of countries that are willing to collaborate, develop technologies and share expertise.

"We are gradually becoming a destination of choice for high-performance computing, attracting some of the best minds in cyber infrastructure. For example, Brazil with high-speed Internet; India, Russia and the US with our high-performance computing; and Egypt with the Blue Gene."