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UCT Research Report '11
98
Managed by technical specialists, Timothy Carr and Andrew
Lewis, the HPC node ran its first UCT job – for Dr Ake
Fagereng of the Department of Geology – in early 2011. Since
then, it has been used across 12 departments, using 208
cores (or processors) and 45 specialised science packages.
The core component of any HPC system is its storage.
The ICTS HPC sports an impressive 25TB scratch area – a
directory to hold files and directories for short periods of
time – for research data analysis and a further 25TB for
archived data.
With demand steadily climbing, the service is expected to
clock over 250 000 processing hours by the end of 2012.
The rise of the cellphone
High-processing computing has clearly become an
essential technology for the modern university. But two
UCT units are also looking at those consumers – and
there are millions of them – whose needs sit at the other
end of the computing spectrum.
Much of the world’s computer science systems were
designed in the developed world, with developed-world
infrastructure in mind, explains Professor Gary Marsden
of UCT’s Department of Computer Science. Networking,
for example, assumes a constant supply of electricity
and fibre-optic cables; this is not always the case in the
developing world.
Professor Marsden approaches this problem from a
different perspective, calling on his background in
human-computer interaction.
“Many of us were trying to apply developed-world
technologies and solutions to problems in Africa, and
it just wasn’t working,” says Professor Marsden. “So we
had to go back and rethink our discipline.”
To this end, Professor Marsden and colleagues set up
the ICT Centre for Development at UCT. Through the
centre, Professor Marsden and his team have designed
applications that allow users to both draw up curricula vitae
and apply for jobs using their cellphones. They are also
working on two major new projects – the first will, if it works
out, allow rural communities to set up their own cellphone
“The HPC node ran its first UCT job
in early 2011. Since then, it has been
used across 12 departments, using
208 cores (or processors) and 45
specialised science packages.”
Master’s student Ian Rogers and Professor Kevin Naidoo in the SCRU Cluster Server Room.