South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research [CSIR] will receive a new BlueGene/P supercomputer donated by IBM in the second half of this year. The new machine, worth an estimated $1.6 million, will be managed by the Meraka Institute at the Center for High-Performance Computing [CHPC] in Cape Town. The Meraka Institute will manage allocations to universities and governments in need of cycles across Africa. The CHPC is currently in the process of building a facility to house their upcoming machine as well as conducting policy discussions surrounding the operation of the new machine.
Access to the computer will be free of charge to any qualifying African institution. Its aim is to support computational research that has potential for positive social or economic outcomes for Africa,” [Dr. Mark Dean, VP of IBM research] adds.
There were no specific technical specs available at the time of this writing. However, according to IBM, the machine will be roughly capable of 14 Teraflops. If this is the case, it would be the fastest computer on the African continent in use for scientific research.
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