HPC Comes Alive in Southern Africa

By Elizabeth Leake, STEM-Trek

April 13, 2015

South Africa’s Kruger National Park was the perfect setting for the conservation-themed, Ninth Annual Center for High Performance Computing’s (CHPC) National Meeting titled “Towards an Energy-Efficient HPC System.” Additional meetings were co-located Dec. 1-5, 2014, including the Southern African Development Community (SADC) HPC Forum, HPC Advisory Council, and the Industrial HPC Advisory Forum.

CHPC Director Happy Sithole opened the conference by thanking conference sponsors, especially its diamond sponsor, Intel, and welcoming 305 HPC enthusiasts from 19 countries and 12 research arenas, including SADC delegates, system administrators, researchers, computational scientists, and industry affiliates. Ninety-two South African students presented posters, or competed for a chance to represent South Africa in July at the HPC Advisory Council International Supercomputing Conference (HPCAC-ISC) Student Cluster Competition in Frankfurt, Germany.

Kruger is one of South Africa’s largest national parks, and home to 336 native trees, 49 fish, 34 amphibians, 114 reptiles, 507 birds, and more than 140 mammalian species that roam freely in a sanctuary the size of Slovenia (or New Jersey-U.S.). Summer had just begun and Kruger’s “Big Five” were active, including rhino, elephant, buffalo, lion, and leopard. The most dangerous animal in South Africa isn’t among the Big Five. Hippos are responsible for the most human deaths and are consequently killed by people who feel threatened, or poached for their tusks, fat and meat.

The Skukuza rest camp features an elegant airport with daily Airlink service from Johannesburg. Its Cattle Baron restaurant serves a Madagascar Peppercorn Steak that would impress the most discerning human carnivore. Additional amenities include a new conference center, air-conditioned bungalows, and paved roads where guests view wildlife from the safety of ranger-driven safari trucks.

Africa CHPC 2014 lions
Wildlife photos by Filippo Spiga (University of Cambridge-UK)

Pre-conference workshops, tutorials, plenary talks by international experts, and breakaway sessions spoke to the very heart of HPC. The program was thoughtfully selected to explore energy-efficient HPC architectural concepts, strategies for software optimization, advances in middleware, international cyberinfrastructure (CI) policy, industry expectations, and a road map for pan-African human capital development (HCD). A conference help desk was available for attendees with questions about CHPC resources. Students engaged in collegial competition, and a less friendly, but highly entertaining, HPC Vendor Crossfire was chaired by Addison Snell (Intersect360 Research).

HPC-Africa-2014-graphic
Bob Sinkovits (SDSC-US)

The intimacy of the conference venue was quite a change for those who attended SC14 one month prior with more than 10,000 attendees in New Orleans’ mile-long urban convention center.

“It was actually a refreshing change to have limited Internet access,” observed attendee and presenter Robert Sinkovits (San Diego Supercomputer Center-U.S.). “This encouraged everyone to close his or her laptop and focus on the conference. It was the first time I experienced a power outage while giving a presentation. I used the ten minutes of semi-darkness to answer questions and to discuss my research.”

“Overall, it was one of the best conference experiences I can remember—just the right size and with a great bunch of culturally-diverse attendees, fantastic poster sessions, top-notch plenary speakers and a phenomenal venue. What’s more, it was great to see African speakers focusing on locally-important research problems, such as detailed studies of southern ocean currents,” said Sinkovits.

SADC HPC Forum

Delegates from Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Lesotho, Tanzania, and South Africa attended the third annual SADC HPC Forum. On behalf of the SADC Secretariat, the two-day session was called to order by Senior Technical Adviser Anneline Morgan (SADC Science, Technology and Innovation, Social and Human Development and Special Programs), and presided over by SADC Forum Chair Willie Ganda (Zimbabwe) who will represent the forum at the June, 2015 SADC ministerial meeting in Zimbabwe. Sithole and Ms. Mmampei Chaba (Dept. of Science and Technology, South Africa) welcomed 30 SADC delegates and international advisers.

Morgan framed SADC’s mission and strategies toward a shared vision of peace, security, international trade, and HCD. Ganda expressed the importance of SADC’s continued progress toward a fully-functional, shared CI.

“Through education and research excellence, SADC member-states can uplift citizens from poverty and enable Africa to compete in global research and industrial theaters,” said Ganda. “SADC’s collective research will be a key enabler for success in a range of high-value industries.”

Happy Sithole CHPC
Dr. Happy Sithole, CHPC

Dr. Sithole shared constructive feedback from the June 2014 SADC ministerial meeting. “The ministers expressed appreciation for our having established high-level objectives and timelines, and are pleased that we are as concerned with HCD and research as we are with the technology,” he said. “They would like us to spend our time together this week developing an implementation framework; we must determine how, when, and by whom each objective will be executed. With a well-defined plan, we will then be prepared to solicit industry partner and SADC ministerial support,” he added.

During this forum, SADC delegates presented national research priorities, progress made since last year and described what they will need to succeed in the future.

Infrastructure

The South African Department of Science and Technology’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) first planted the seeds of a national CI in 2007 when CHPC was launched. Since then, Sithole has envisioned the build-out of a multinational high-performance regional network, a shared software stack, and digital trust fabric to provide the foundation for a productive and secure interfederated research and education CI for sub-Saharan Africa.

With the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) locating in the Karoo region of South Africa, and instrumentation planned in many SADC locations, there’s an emphasis on data-driven research. To advise on best practices relating to data-intensive research and multinational policy-making, Anwar Vahed (CSIR/Meraka Institute-SA) joined the SADC-HPC Forum discussions.

While some national HPC centers are further along and better funded than others, Sithole explained that all will benefit from the shared CI—especially where there are limited local resources. “While the Ranger installation was the catalyst for HPC engagement, it’s only the beginning. There’s an x86 system in Zimbabwe similar to Ranger, and more racks are promised by the University of Cambridge. Everything will be accessible, and shared,” said Sithole.

He also added that cloud-enabled, infrastructure-as-a-service is commercially available, and CyberSKA, a cloud-enabled portal for infrastructure located at CHPC, provides access to a variety of SKA-related test-bed systems. Advisers suggested that SADC researchers will benefit from U.S. and European-based innovation ecosystems and science gateways. “Not only are there resources earmarked for use by specific domains, they offer secure, data-transfer solutions to bridge technical and policy barriers between multinational collaborators,” shared Vahed.

SADC delegates
SADC 2014 HPC Forum delegates


Human Capital Development

SADC delegates are eager to learn the skills necessary to create a national point-of-presence for computational provisioning and workforce development. Adviser Dan Stanzione (Texas Advanced Computing Center, TACC-U.S.) expressed the importance of preparing multiple support communities, including systems builders, operators, trainers, and researchers. In addition to the training offered during the 2015 CHPC meeting, Sithole added that the student cluster competition is an excellent way to prepare young people to envision the possibility of pursuing high-tech careers. While it’s only sponsored by South Africa now, Sithole hopes it will be a SADC-wide competition in the future.

SKA contributed training resources to SADC HPC Forum institutions in South Africa, Mozambique, Botswana, Namibia, Mauritius, and Zambia, and non-SADC universities in Ghana and Kenya. Their training program requires 10 terabytes of local storage, which added to the Ranger rack implementation cost in some cases, according to CHPC’s Nick Thorne who is leading that effort.

In an effort to jump-start scientific and educational collaborations with SADC member nations, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is supporting local U.S. expenses for 16 visiting SADC scientists and system administrators so they can attend a Nov. 2015 training workshop at TACC prior to the SC15 conference. The first leg of their journey (16 African round-trip flights) is being donated by Airlink Airlines, and STEM-Trek hopes to find sponsors for the remaining 64 flights.

“NSF recognizes that HPC is a fundamental enabler of agricultural research and plant biology which are priorities for TACC and SADC, alike,” said Stanzione. “Through their investment, NSF hopes to foster future U.S./pan-African collaborations,” he added.

Throughout the HCD discussion, advisers volunteered knowledge of a variety of free or low-cost HPC training resources. The list is available on the STEM-Trek site.

Ranger Implementation

Eighty-four racks of TACC’s Ranger system were donated by the University of Texas at Austin-U.S. (UT). CHPC shipped one fourth of the racks to South Africa (SA) in late 2013 with the intention of distributing them among SA universities to create mid-level HPC services. Additional SADC regions received racks directly from TACC, namely Tanzania (16), and Botswana (4). CHPC augmented the SA racks with additional hardware that allows them to function as stand-alone clusters, and distributed them to the University of Fort Hare (Eastern Cape), University of KwaZulu Natal), University of Venda (Limpopo), and University of the Witwatersrand (Gauteng). Two racks will be hosted by the Zambia Research and Education Network group. During the meeting, Lesotho expressed an interest in hosting resources, too.

“It wasn’t as easy as we thought it would be to create many, small clusters from a large system,” said CHPC’s Thorne. “There were unforeseen costs and physical challenges, but it has been highly successful, nevertheless.”

“There has been surprising demand for upcycled systems,” he continued. “In Africa, hardware is more expensive, but energy and personnel are less costly than they are in the U.S. or Europe, so there’s a stronger case to keep systems in production longer.” Since UT donated Ranger, others have offered their decommissioned hardware, including Cambridge University.

zimbabwe-data-center-blue-skirts2-e1423872915297
Zimbabwe Center for High Performance Computing 2014 dedication

Zimbabwe’s effort first began in 2011, and a recently- renovated building houses their new datacenter. Their X86-class system (similar to Ranger) will be shared with the SADC-CI, and they have plans to expand. Next to CHPC in South Africa, Zimbabwe’s center is the second brightest point-of-presence on the regional CI front. With redundant data and power, plus three 120 kw back-up generators, Zimbabwe’s datacenter will be able to support up to 36 teraflops of processing power.

To establish Zimbabwe’s HPC center, Ganda lobbied and appealed to e-government agencies and regional industries (mining and agriculture). He helped them understand how a local HPC center will impact economic, research and educational outcomes. A similar funding strategy (with cross-functional private and public support) has been effective in South Korea, according to SADC HPC Forum Adviser Cynthia McIntyre (Council on Competitiveness-U.S.).

Port_Elizabeth_1_ashxTenth CHPC National Meeting,
Port Elizabeth, South Africa, Nov. 30 to
Dec. 4, 2015

Sithole thanked conference sponsors Intel, Dell, Altair, HP, Huawei, Data Direct Networks, Seagate, Amazon Web Services, Mellanox, Eclipse Holdings, and Rectron. He hopes everyone will return next year for their tenth national meeting at the Boardwalk Hotel in beautiful Port Elizabeth, known as the “Friendly City.”

Watch for updates about the HPCAC-ISC Student Cluster Competition, SC15 TACC Workshop and the 2015 conference on the CHPC site.

Africa CHPC 2014 tree-bird
Wildlife photos by Filippo Spiga (University of Cambridge-UK)

About the Author

ElizabethLeake-headshotElizabeth Leake is the president and founder of STEM-Trek Nonprofit, a global, grassroots organization that supports scholarly travel for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics scholars from underrepresented groups and regions. Since 2011, she has worked as a communications consultant for a variety of education and research organizations, and served as correspondent for activities sponsored by the eXtreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (TeraGrid/XSEDE), the Partnerhip for Advanced Computing in Europe (DEISA/PRACE), the European Grid Infrastructure (EGEE/EGI), South African Center for High Performance Computing (CHPC), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and Sustainable Horizons, Inc.

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, code-named Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from its predecessors, including the red-hot H100 and A100 GPUs. Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. While Nvidia may not spring to mind when thinking of the quant Read more…

2024 Winter Classic: Meet the HPE Mentors

March 18, 2024

The latest installment of the 2024 Winter Classic Studio Update Show features our interview with the HPE mentor team who introduced our student teams to the joys (and potential sorrows) of the HPL (LINPACK) and accompany Read more…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the field was normalized for boys in 1969 when the Apollo 11 missi Read more…

Apple Buys DarwinAI Deepening its AI Push According to Report

March 14, 2024

Apple has purchased Canadian AI startup DarwinAI according to a Bloomberg report today. Apparently the deal was done early this year but still hasn’t been publicly announced according to the report. Apple is preparing Read more…

Survey of Rapid Training Methods for Neural Networks

March 14, 2024

Artificial neural networks are computing systems with interconnected layers that process and learn from data. During training, neural networks utilize optimization algorithms to iteratively refine their parameters until Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, code-named Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the fi Read more…

Survey of Rapid Training Methods for Neural Networks

March 14, 2024

Artificial neural networks are computing systems with interconnected layers that process and learn from data. During training, neural networks utilize optimizat Read more…

PASQAL Issues Roadmap to 10,000 Qubits in 2026 and Fault Tolerance in 2028

March 13, 2024

Paris-based PASQAL, a developer of neutral atom-based quantum computers, yesterday issued a roadmap for delivering systems with 10,000 physical qubits in 2026 a Read more…

India Is an AI Powerhouse Waiting to Happen, but Challenges Await

March 12, 2024

The Indian government is pushing full speed ahead to make the country an attractive technology base, especially in the hot fields of AI and semiconductors, but Read more…

Charles Tahan Exits National Quantum Coordination Office

March 12, 2024

(March 1, 2024) My first official day at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) was June 15, 2020, during the depths of the COVID-19 loc Read more…

AI Bias In the Spotlight On International Women’s Day

March 11, 2024

What impact does AI bias have on women and girls? What can people do to increase female participation in the AI field? These are some of the questions the tech Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Analyst Panel Says Take the Quantum Computing Plunge Now…

November 27, 2023

Should you start exploring quantum computing? Yes, said a panel of analysts convened at Tabor Communications HPC and AI on Wall Street conference earlier this y Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Training of 1-Trillion Parameter Scientific AI Begins

November 13, 2023

A US national lab has started training a massive AI brain that could ultimately become the must-have computing resource for scientific researchers. Argonne N Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire