Computer students to fly SA flag

A TEAM of nine students from the universities of the Witwatersrand and Limpopo have been selected to represent South Africa at the International Student Cluster Competition to be hosted at the 2018 International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) in Frankfurt, Germany, in June.

The group was selected from 10 teams consisting of four undergraduate students each from various universities at a national competition which took place during the annual Centre for High Performance Computing conference in Pretoria last week. Department of Science and Technology director-general Phil Mjwara said the winning team was going to compete abroad with 11 teams from countries such China, Singapore, Thailand, Poland, and Germany.

“The department was committed to investing in science, engineering and innovation including the establishment and support institutes such as the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC),” said Mjwara.

Last year students from the University of the Western Cape and Stellenbosch University claimed second prize.

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.

CHPC director Happy Sithole said he was confident that team SA will make the nation proud next.