South African students from Wits University and the University of Limpopo will represent the country at the International Student Cluster Competition hosted at the 2018 International Supercomputing Conference in Germany.
The students came first at a national competition which took place during the annual Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) conference in Pretoria in December 2017. The students were part of ten teams that battled it out to demonstrate their cluster building and high-performance computing skills.
The winning team will now compete against 11 teams from different countries such as China, Singapore, Thailand, Poland and Germany, among others.
In a real-time challenge, the students build small high-performance computing clusters on the exhibition floor, using hardware provided by CHPC and its industrial partners, and race to demonstrate the best performance across a series of benchmarks and applications.
The CHPC is one of three primary pillars of the national cyber infrastructure intervention initiated by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and managed by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
Speaking at the competition, DST director-general, Dr Phil Mjwara, said that the department was committed to investing in science, engineering and innovation, including the establishment and support institutes such as the CHPC. “This kind of government assistance fosters the creation and dissemination of knowledge of innovation, and has a strong influence on the long-term competitiveness of the country. There’s no doubt that a country’s information, communications and technology (ICT) sector is vital to its long-term prosperity. The globally competitive ICT structure creates a sustainable ecosystem and enables researchers and scientists to globally compete,” he said.
In 2016, South Africa came second and is hoping to bring home another medal this year. CHPC director, Dr Happy Sithole, is confident that team South Africa will make the nation proud. “We are very proud of what we have managed to achieve as a country. In 2016 our team managed to compete with the best teams and we won. We believe that this team will make us proud.”
Dr Happy Sithole said the objective was to create awareness of high-performance computing and the impact it has on the country: “Students receive a unique opportunity to learn, experience and demonstrate how high-performance computing influences our world and day-to-day learning.”
The winning team comprised:
• Rosendorff Meir (Wits)
• Bruton Joshua (Wits)
• Paupamah Kimessha (Wits)
• Mokoena Katleho (Wits)
• Sithole Njabulo (University of Limpopo)
• Michlo Nathan (Wits)
• Giga Biters and Evans Sharon (Wits)
• Gekko Bulbulia Zubair (Wits)
For more information contact David Mandaha, CSIR, +27 (0)12 841 3654, [email protected]
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