South Africa’s National Integrated Cyberinfrastructure System joins Los Alamos’ Efficient Mission Centric Computing Consortium

The supercomputing center in South Africa is the first international partner to join the collaboration

April 9, 2020

2020-05-05
Los Alamos’ Efficient Mission Centric Computing Consortium recently welcomed it's first international partner.

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., April 9, 2020—Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Efficient Mission Centric Computing Consortium (EMC3) recently welcomed its first international partner, the South African National Integrated Cyberinfrastructure System (NICIS).

“We are pleased to collaborate with NICIS on experiences in deploying a scalable cool data storage tier. Sharing requirements, solutions and experiences on challenges in providing an efficient computing environment is an important part of EMC3,” said Gary Grider, division leader for High Performance Computing at Los Alamos.

NICIS promotes scientific and industrial development through the provision of high-performance computing capability, high-speed network capacity and a national research data infrastructure integrated hierarchically into globally connected systems and into local system systems, providing seamless access for the research and education communities of South Africa. Read more about the NICIS here.

“The Center for High Performance Computing, as the only center of its size in the African continent, thrives to provide world-class HPC systems to researchers in Africa. For this mission to be realized, international partnerships such as the one with Los Alamos’ EMC3 are crucial, and we are looking forward to many technological advances through our collaboration," said NICIS Manager Happy Sithole, Ph.D.

The collaborative exchange will be done under EMC3, centered at Los Alamos’ Ultra-Scale Systems Research Center (USRC). The EMC3 consortium’s mission is to investigate efficient ultra-scale computing and networking architectures, applications and environments, to provide the most efficient computing architectures and storage tiers possible. EMC3 is focused on efficient computing environments for demanding workloads. The consortium has mission-HPC-using organizations, HPC technology providers, and university partners in its membership.

U. S. national and international mission-focused HPC consumers and technology providers are encouraged to pursue joining EMC3 and the march toward mission-focused efficient HPC.

About Los Alamos National Laboratory

Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is managed by Triad, a public service oriented, national security science organization equally owned by its three founding members: Battelle Memorial Institute (Battelle), the Texas A&M University System (TAMUS), and the Regents of the University of California (UC) for the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration.

Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health, and global security concerns.