The fastest computer in Africa will be unveiled today in South Africa by the Cape Town-based Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC).
The computer is referred to as the petaflop (PFLOP) machine. It was built to process speeds of a thousand trillion floating point operations per second. Floating point operations or flops are what experts use in computing to calculate extremely long numbers.
The PFLOP machine is one of the CHPC’s projects to build high-performance computing and advanced data technologies in South Africa, with the aim of enhancing the country’s capacity to produce and disseminate knowledge.
At the official unveiling happening today, Dr Thomas Auf der Heyde, the Department of Science and Technology’s Deputy Director-General: Research Development and Support, will deliver the keynote address. CHPC Director, Dr Happy Sithole, will speak about the value of high-performance computing in South Africa.
