Gender-empowered South African team grabs gold at world

supercomputing competition

25-06-2014 | Munich, Germany | MGLI

GIRLS can excel in STEMI (science, technology, engineering, mathematics and innovation) if given the

platform to shine. The South African team at the 2014 International Super Computing competition

(ISC14) has confirmed this by exhibiting to the world that the country not only takes ICT innovation

and cultivating an environment for students to flourish but takes women empowerment in the field

seriously. On their way to grabbing gold, the South African team of six was comprised of two

outstanding young women Nicole Thomas and Ellen Nxala. This was the largest representation of

females by any country at the world event.

Members of the SA team were: Nicole Thomas, Warren Jacobs, Saeed Natha, Ellen Nxala, Pieter

Malan, Eugene de Beste, Kevin Beyers, and Hardus Bodenstein. The team’s advisors were David

Mcleod and Vernon Nicholls.

Ellen Baphumelele (Baps) Nxala is a maths student from Fort Hare who led a team in last year's

South African cluster competition championships. Nicole Thomas is an astrophysics student from

UWC that was part of Team Youdubs, the winning team at the SA champs.

The ISC14’s Student Cluster Competition is an opportunity to showcase student expertise in a

friendly yet spirited competition. Held as part of HPC Interconnections, the Student Cluster

Competition is designed to introduce the next generation of students to the high-performance

computing community. Over the last couple of years, the competition has drawn teams from around

the world, including Australia, Canada, China, Costa Rica, South Africa, Germany, Russia, and Taiwan.

In this real-time, non-stop, 48-hour challenge, teams of undergraduate and/or high school students

assemble a small cluster on the SC14 exhibit floor and race to demonstrate the greatest sustained

performance across a series of applications. In the Standard Track, teams of six (6) students partner

with vendors to design and build a cutting-edge cluster from commercially available components

that does not exceed a 26-amp power limit, and work with application experts to tune and run the

competition codes. At ISC13 the Commodity Cluster track was introduced and was held again at

ISC14. In this track, teams of five (5) undergraduate and/or high school students will bring

commercially available hardware that is not to exceed a $2500USD retail price limit and a 15-amp

power limit. Both “off-the-shelf” and “off-the-wall” solutions are encouraged.

Prior to the competition, the teams worked with their advisors and vendor partners who are domain specialists to design and build a cutting-edge, commercially available small cluster constrained by the 26-amp power limit (Standard track) or $2500 USD cost limit and a 15-amp power limit (Commodity track). The South African team was sponsored by Dell, Nvidia and Mellanox Technologies.

During ISC14 teams assembled, tested, and tuned their machines. In full view of conference attendees, teams executed the prescribed workload while showing progress and science visualization output on large high-resolution displays in their areas. Teams raced to correctly complete the greatest number of application runs during the competition period until the close of the exhibit floor after 48 hours.

The showcase portion of the competition allowed teams to show off what they had learnt and what they could do with their equipment. Veteran HPC experts were present to judge the visualizations and to interview each team on their cluster and application knowledge.

The winning team in each track was determined based on a combined score for workload completed, benchmark performance, conference attendance, and interviews. Recognition was given to Edinburgh for the highest LINPACK (Standard track) and FLOPS-per-dollar LINPACK The overall winner was the South African CHPC team, second was University of Science and Technology from China and in third place was Tsingua University also from China.

This sterling performance from the South African team which was the most diverse from gender to ethnicity was shows that nothing is impossible with unity towards a common purpose. It is essential that South Africa celebrates this victory and ride on this wave of success to further the cause of previously disadvantaged groups especially girls and women in ICT. There is a great need for South Africa to stimulate the number of girls pursuing technically inclined STEM subjects and careers. This victory is a sure sign that we are on the right track as a nation and with more concerted efforts much more is achievable.

It is my hope that the South African CHPC team members and all like-minded youths in South Africa will raise the South African flag higher in the ICT field by becoming eminent innovators like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and others. The policy makers, corporates, schools, universities and non-governmental organisations should work together in nurturing the much-needed ICT talent in every feasible. I would personally want to see an innovative district set up like Silicon Valley where innovators churn ideas into the world.Well done South Africa CHPC team, you are truly empowered and serve as an inspiration to all the youngsters in the country.

http://www.isc-events.com/isc14/pressreleases-reader/items/international-supercomputing-community-to-gather-in-leipzig-from-june-22-26.html

Edzai Conilias Zvobwo is the CEO of MathsGenius Leadership Institute and is passionate about empowering youths to soar high in STEMI and leadership.