Sun Microsystems has announced plans to deploy South Africa's 'largest high performance computing solution' at the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) in Cape Town.

The CHPC will eventually be capable of churning out an estimated 27 teraFLOPS of peak computing power with Sun's hybrid architecture.

'CHPC will be receiving some of Sun's first blade systems based on the next-generation Intel Xeon processor. Sun's end-to-end solution is providing this customer with an ideal fit - the flexibility of the Blade 6048 modular system to host blades spanning multiple generations, in addition to open storage and software,' Mike Vildibill, director, systems practice at Sun Microsystems, told IT Examiner.

Stefan Jacobs, a Sun systems architect, explained that the CHPC would help advance a number of the country's ongoing research projects, such as energy alternatives, weather prediction and healthcare.

'For example, research is being conducted at the University of Limpopo in South Africa relating to Lithium crystals, used in high energy-density solid-state lithium-ion batteries. This aims to improve battery technology to deliver cost effective and long-term power solutions. The research relies on computational modeling methods that benefit greatly from the incredible processing power available at the CHPC,' said Jacobs.

Jacobs also noted that Sun's delivery of the components could be expected to assist the government with its goal to position South Africa as a 'beacon of research on the continent'.

'The needs for the development of high-end IT skills in the region have been identified and Sun is working toward supporting these goals with its local partners (Eclipse Networks and Breakpoint Solutions),' added Jacobs.  X

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