Page 7 - EngineerIt June 2021

ICT HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING

CHPC computing backbone The research scope of Prof. Soliman’s

research lab is related to the design and
study of biologically and therapeutically
oriented targets. This is undertaken
of COVID-19 research by employing the applications of
computational methods to the study of
problems of chemical and biochemical
reactivity, with particular focus on the
transition state, environmental effects on
mechanisms, the origins of catalysis, and
n a recent report about the milestone teraflops). That is 15 times faster than the the interpretation of kinetic isotope effects.
achieved in Covid -19 research in system named ‘Tsessebe’ (Setswana for This includes mechanistic pathways and
ISouth Africa, Prof. Mahmoud Soliman antelope) which had a peak performance transition states for reactions in enzymes
and solutions, the design of enzyme
of the Molecular Bio-Computation and of 24,9 teraflops/second and became inhibitors, exploring the binding and
Drug Design Research Laboratory, number 311 on the world’s top 500 catalytic theme of the designed targets,
School of Health Sciences, Discipline super-computers, and was ranked and adopting sophisticated computational
of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, University number one in Africa. CHPC names its approaches to understand protein
of KwaZulu Natal wrote: “All research high performance computers after the structures and functions. n
work conducted in the lab is primarily fastest animals in the country and gave
supported by the computational this petaflop machine the name ‘Lengau’ uptake by industry. We however have
resources provided by the Centre for (Setswana for cheetah). not turned anyone away, and by
High Performance Computing (CHPC). “From the outset, Dr Happy Sithole, carefully scheduling projects, we have
Without its amazing support, much of who heads up CHPC in Cape Town, managed to meet the demand.
the important research would not have had a much larger vision for CHPC, not When we installed the ‘Lengau’
been accomplished. The CHPC team is only to support academic institutions system we planned for a six year period
commended for the work it has done to but to capacitate industry to benefit before an upgrade was necessary. We
keep this facility maintained. “ from big data that is collected but is have now reached this point and expect
The CHPC is one of three seldom put to good use. Over the past to upgrade to a new HPC in the current
primary pillars of the national cyber- few years his vision was realised, with financial year. During the past few years,
infrastructure intervention supported more enterprises understanding the technology has been on the march.
by the Department of Science and value of big data and extracting valued We have seen some interesting chip
Innovation (DSI). The South African information with supper computing manufacturing developments from Intel
National Research Network (SANReN) applications. “We have seen sectors and AMD, new processing technologies
and the Data Intensive Research such bio-informatics and the engineering and interconnect systems. It will be a
Infrastructure of South Africa (DIRISA) and petrochemical industries using question of phasing out and phasing in.
complement the CHPC through the HPC to analyse big data to improve and The current system will still be used by
provision of high-speed, high-bandwidth streamline their processes, as well as the projects which don’t require the much
connectivity, and the effective curation invaluable support provided to the SKA”. higher processing speed of any new
of a variety of notably large and critical “The Covid-19 pandemic, the total system. We are currently evaluating what
data bases. The CHPC infrastructure is lockdown and the various levels of the best possible option is. One does not
updated and maintained meticulously to lockdown were trying times for us”, rush into a new system and then after a
comply with international standards. Dr Sithole told EngineerIT. “For many year, find that it has to be uplifted again.”
The CHPC has come a long way of our staff, working from home was a
since its first machines. After a slow challenge but we knew how important our Department of Communications
start, it unveiled the fastest facility was for the management of the white paper
computer on the continent, a pandemic. I am proud of our people and When the Minister of Communications
petaflops machine, in 2016. the important role they are fulfilling. published the white paper which, amongst
This is a super computer “A few years ago we were other things, announced the setting up
with processing speed amongst the top 500 CHPC’s in of a government HPC centre and cloud
capable of a thousand-trillion the world but we have now been server, there was an outcry about why
floating point operations surpassed by many new government wanted to compete with
per second. With over developments in the private enterprise. Sithole said that CHPC
40 000 cores, the world. Our facilities and SITA are working together to plan
machine is the are now fully utilised how to best provision a service to handle
fastest computer in terms of our the government digital transformation. He
on the African Covid support said it is not that government wants to set
continent running of the research up in opposition to Amazon and Azure,
at a speed of community as but rather that it wants to simply provide
roughly one well as an services to government departments in
petaflop (1000 increased order to deliver better. n

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