Vision

CHPC is to be recognised as the national HPC facility in South Africa. It will consist of a central and voluntarily aligned nodes and a growing presence over time in the rest of Africa. The CHPC needs to operate as a sustainable and a business element of the Meraka Institute, which is an independent institution with strong links to DST, and part of the CSIR's governance system.

The CHPC will link to the technology missions in the National R&D Strategy through, for example, supporting initiatives such as the advanced manufacturing, biotechnology, and ICT strategies, and new initiatives with high government priority like aerospace, as well as addressing issues which are of low priority in developed countries (such as infectious diseases). The availability of HPC infrastructure in South Africa will stimulate the absorptive capacity of industry to increase R&D investment and employ additional researchers.

The CHPC should function as a national research, training and service centre; the CHPC will therefore produce nationally and continentally relevant research projects with visible and impactful S&T, develop human resources and contribute to transformation and training, and provide support to the associated nodes. The CHPC must have a critical mass in HPC equipment and people, including domain specialists and people.

It is critical to have government support, and be recognised as contributing to the National R&D Strategy. In order to fully meet its mandate, the CHPC must operate in a national and international environment with sufficient and affordable internet bandwidth.

Mission

The CHPC has as its central mission the provision of high-end computing and computing expertise for all research in South Africa, including disciplines ranging from the natural sciences, medicine, engineering and social sciences. The CHPC will be a central holding house of scientific computing and HPC research activities and will foster research that will address grand challenges and grow computational research alongside experiment and theory across all academic disciplines, as a third mode of research and peer methodology.