Tuesday 27 January 2015

The Director of the Centre for High Performance Computing visits Wits electronics lab

The Director of the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC), Dr Happy Sithole and the Wits Deputy Vice-Chancellor for research, Prof. Zeblon Vilakazi have visited today the High-throughput Electronics Lab (HTEL) at the School of Physics. Some of our group members currently abroad connected via CERN's vidyo.

Dr. Sithole has shown great interest in the research activities of the students and young researchers of our team. The CHPC is interested in collaborating in the area of high-throughput computing with ARM processors and GPUs. One of the challenges that High-performance computing displays is the ability to move the high volumes of data to performant processors with low latency. The HTEL is devising solutions to this problem based on local designs. The involvement of the HTEL in the upgrade activities of the Tile Calorimeter of the ATLAS detector is a critical driver for these activities.

The function started by introducing Dr. Sithole to the group members and with a presentation about the main activities of the HTEL: FGPA-based electronics, high-throughput general purpose electronics, GPGPUs, ATCA systems, development of low cost computers and electronics radiation, high-throughput data analysis.

Below is a group picture taken at the HTEL. First row, centre, one can see Dr. Sithole, the Head of the School of Physics, Prof. John Carter and Prof. Vilakazi. Missing in the picture are Dr. Deepak Kar, Pablo Moreno, Thokozani Khumalo, Dr. Xifeng Ruan, Dr. Luis March, Shell-may Liao, Guillermo Hamity, Kehinde Tomiwa, the technical support staff and last, but far from least, Prof. Elias Sideras-Haddad.



Prof. Vilakazi addresses the students, referring to the HTEL as a "success story":



The rest of us are happy to listen:


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