Top universities join SKA project
The newly formed Western Cape Data Intensive Research Facility will include some of the nation's brightest minds to establish and operate a datacentric high-performance computing facility for intensive research. It forms part of the Department of Science and Technology's national integrated cyber-infrastructure system.
The universities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch have signed up.
Project leader professor Russ Taylor, who is a SKA research chairman at UCT and director of the new Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy, said: "This facility will be a platform for developing innovative approaches to research with big data.
"It will enable South African researchers in astronomy and bio-informatics to compete with the world's best."
When completed in 2025 the SKA radio telescope, which is being built in the Northern Cape, will be the world's largest producer of data, generating enough data to fill 4.5million standard 4.7GB DVDs a day. Taylor said the SKA would produce data at a rate equivalent to all the internet traffic in the world once completed.
He said South Africa had to take the lead in handling the big data or risk it being shipped offshore to be processed and analysed. In June, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research's centre for high performance computing unveiled the R100-million Lengau, Africa's latest and fastest computer.
Thomas Auf der Heyde, Science and Technology deputy director-general, said managing big data was becoming more important.
"Developing local big data skills is important to our national development," he said.
Source: The Times