We take a look at the success of the South African CHPC team at the International Supercomputing Competition held in Munich, Germany.

1. 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

2. 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.