South Africa’s supercomputing excellence
August 2016
News
The Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) has taken the top prize in the international Student Cluster Competition held at the International Supercomputing Conference in Germany. The CHPC is no newcomer in this competition. It won the top prize in 2013 and 2014 and took second prize in 2015. This year the centre entered another team of undergraduate students and took the overall prize, beating 11 other contenders from across the globe.
The international competition features small teams that compete to demonstrate the incredible capabilities of state-of-the-art high performance cluster hardware and software. In a real-time challenge, 12 teams of six undergraduate students build a small cluster of their own design and race to demonstrate the greatest performance across a series of benchmarks and applications.
South Africa is the only country that enters a brand new team each year. This is done to give as many students as possible exposure to the international HPC community.
Participants build small HPC clusters out of hardware provided by the CHPC and its industrial partners. They are given a selection of applications to optimise and run on their cluster to demonstrate their design’s performance. Each team is assigned a budget of R200 000 and a parts list from one of the CHPC’s industry partners and must design a cluster taking into consideration the set of applications which will be used to benchmark the cluster. Once the cluster’s design is finalised the hardware specification is submitted to the CHPC’s partners for manufacturing. The hardware, as specified in the cluster design, is delivered to the exhibition floor of the CHPC national meeting. Here the teams unpack their equipment, construct their cluster, install the software stack and perform benchmarks. The teams are judged on a combination of the performance of the applications and the design of the cluster.
For more information http://www.chpc.ac.za
Further reading:
RS South Africa shapes future engineering talent
RS South Africa
News
RS South Africa is demonstrating that nurturing future engineers goes beyond traditional classrooms or competitions. On STEM Day, the company shone a light on the full spectrum of its educational initiatives.
Read more...
ABB and Compu-Power bring high-efficiency UPS innovation to IS3 X-Change 2025
News
ABB recently participated in the 31st annual IS
3X-Change 2025 in Cape Town, alongside its long-standing channel partner Compu-Power.
Read more...
Meta and partners announce completion of 2Africa subsea cable system
News
Meta, in partnership with leading global and regional telecommunications companies, has announced the completion and activation of the core 2Africa subsea cable system. This marks a historic milestone in digital infrastructure, establishing what the world’s longest open-access subsea cable system.
Read more...
RS South Africa retains Level 2 B-BBEE status
RS South Africa
News
RS South Africa has once again achieved Level 2 B-BBEE verification.
Read more...
SEW-EURODRIVE unveils world class facility in Gqeberha
News
In a landmark event in the Eastern Cape attended by key customers and industry leaders, SEW-EURODRIVE officially opened its expanded state-of-the-art facility in Gqeberha, marking a major milestone in its strategy to strengthen regional support and deepen its footprint in the region.
Read more...
Africa’s brightest young battery innovators
Schneider Electric South Africa
News
Schneider Electric and Enactus, the international NGO dedicated to inspiring students through entrepreneurial action, have announced the winners of the 2025 Energy Transition Battery Innovation Challenge, funded by the Schneider Electric Foundation. It empowers young innovators to design battery solutions addressing the region’s most pressing energy challenges.
Read more...
Africa’s strategic role in powering the global clean energy future
News
The 2026 Africa Energy Indaba is to spotlight Africa’s mineral wealth, industrialisation potential and the urgent need for sustainable value chain development.
Read more...
Crash reconstruction tests advance vehicle safety research
News
The University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Scientific Multidisciplinary Advanced Research Technologies (SMART) Lab recently participated in a series of collaborative crash reconstruction tests held at the Toyota Test Track.
Read more...
Siemens and HD Hyundai to accelerate revitalisation of USA shipbuilding
News
Siemens Digital Industries Software has signed a memorandum of understanding with HD Hyundai to drive the revitalisation and modernisation of the commercial shipbuilding industry in the USA.
Read more...
Accelerating Africa’s smart manufacturing future
News
Automation Day, a dedicated one-day conference within the Manufacturing Indaba 2026, will bring together industry leaders, innovators and policymakers for an in-depth exploration of how automation is reshaping Africa’s manufacturing landscape.
Read more...
printer friendly version