From SC Online we learn that South Africa has just brought a 160 node, 2.5 TFLOPS system online in Cape Town.
South African researchers now have the advantage of using massive computing power in their quest for new knowledge and application. The Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) is the first of its kind in South Africa. Initiated by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), hosted by the University of Cape Town (UCT) and managed by the Meraka Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the CHPC is making scientific ‘supercomputing’ a reality for South Africa.
…”The facilities at the CHPC provide impetus for researchers throughout southern Africa to engage in a collaborative and multidisciplinary approach to solve complex computationally intensive problems that will make a real difference,” said Johan Eksteen, Technology Research Manager at the Meraka Institute.
This is a wonderful development (although I don’t think it will have enough juice to change this picture).
I beg to differ.
The centre maybe the first of it’s kind in SA, but supercomputing is not.
So called “Supercomputing” we have done for a number of years to assist our researchers. We are now in the process of upgrading our hpc cluster to latest technology.
One cannot really talk about a “supercomputer” if the capability is only 2.5 Terraflop as above.
Supercomputers already approaches Petaflop, if not already achieved.
Unless you have a budget of about 50 million and enough money to pay for a 3 Mega Watt power consumption, one will not have a supercomputer.
Above system’s capability is about 1/400 of that of the latest supercomputer.
Koos – I don’t think the story claimed that this is the first incidence of supercomputing in South Africa, only that this is the first center of its kind, which is a little ambiguous to me. I do think your definition of a supercomputer is a little too extreme. You can buy an 80 TFLOPS supercomputer for $20 or $30M these days, and that would give you the 15th largest supercomputer in the world today. Petaflops machines are going to be rare for several more years.