SARAO News

A one-day work session was held on 11 July 2017 at the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation (MESTI) in Ghana to kick off the High Performance Computing (HPC) training programme in Ghana.

The training programme, named the Big Data Project, includes the donation of HPC equipment to Ghana.

The main objective of the meeting was to identify potential users for the joint research and teaching project. The sub-objectives are to identify the host site, develop a strategy for setup and operationalising of the facility; and identifying flagship projects that could be piloted on the computing equipment donated to Ghana.

The meeting included participants from the Ghana Space Science and Technology Institute, the University of Ghana, the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research; and the Kofi Annan ICT Centre.

During phase 1 of the project HPC was installed in five SKA African partner countries, namely Botswana, Zambia, Namibia, Madagascar and Mauritius, an initiative being led by the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) in Ghana.

The CHPC is one of three primary pillars of the national cyber-infrastructure interventions in South Africa supported by the Department of Science and Technology (DST). The South African National Research Network (SANReN) and the Data Intensive Research Infrastructure of South Africa (DIRISA) complement the CHPC through the provision of high-speed, high-bandwidth connectivity, and the effective curation of a variety of notably large and critical databases.

MESTI Minister Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng chaired the meeting and announced that the HPC equipment will be placed at the CSIR Institute for Scientific and Technological Information (CSIR-INSTI) site.

A meeting to agree on the strategy for setup and operationalisation of the HPC facility was developed during a visit to the Kutunse site on 13 July 2017.