Head of Centre of Excellence in ICT at DIT, Dr
Amos Nungu, stresses a point to journalists in Dar es Salaam recently on
the importance of super computer to the national economy.
Such environment integrate hardware, software and middleware components, networks, data repositories and all kinds of supporting elements so enabling virtual research communities (VRC) to flourish globally.
The el4Africa’s vision for an Africa e-infrastructure in 2020 is a standard based fully interoperable ICT platform that will enable scientists to do better and faster research with collaborators across Africa and other regions of the world.
New training and education programmes will be available to form the new generation of African e-researchers able to tackle the important problems affecting their region through a multi-disciplinary approach.
The Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology (DIT) Principal, Professor John Kondoro told this paper recently in Dar es Salaam that e-infrastructures are electronic facilities of technology which are much broader; one of them could be a backbone which is like a high way of transporting information.
Another one is the super computer, which is present at DIT. It is a facility of high performance, with very high speed and also has very big capacity for storage of information.
“The essence of this infrastructure is very important in the contemporary world because we need them for computation and for storage.”
“As I said you can do a lot of works in terms of much faster speed especially to somebody who is used to computate something that can take long. For instance, we have been working with the metrological agency to compute and process so as to get appropriate weather forecast information which has been a major problem in the country,” he explained.
Kondoro said that there are things which when using normal computers can take several days to accomplish them, but depending on the speed of super computer, it can take may be few hours or few minutes.
“So, what it means is that where it would have taken several days to have information about weather forecast, with this big facility it would take few minutes and you can even see what is happening.”
Now such infrastructures are important, if today we are talking about climate change. And you want to see its profile; how was it about ten years ago. To be able to capture that information, show vegetation; and show out this has been changing overtime, you can’t do it with this normal computer-it will collapse; but with this kind of facility you can do it.
According to Prof Kondoro, with super computers, one can have computation, and simulations. He said this facility is like any other computer, only that it has high speed and a lot of storage space.
Meanwhile, DIT boss has welcomed people who want to go for trials to see what is happening and demonstrated at DIT.
At his part, Head of Centre of Excellency in ICT at DIT, Dr Amos Nungu said that super computers are very vital to researchers and scientists in their day to day endeavours.
He urged that super computers should be for public good, and should not only end in colleges and universities.
Speaking in the same venue, the Director General, Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH), Dr Hassan Mshinda said that the super computers established by DIT with the support from the government of India were very important to the Tanzanian researchers and scientists.
“Due to their high speed, super computers allow us be able to analyse massive amount of data and computing data within a very short period of time,” he noted.
He further said the computers will enable them collaborate with other experts in high performance computing and other members of the private sector. And it will also help them develop a new development in ICT sector.
“Mshinda said that with the introduction of these super computers, all data the government and organisations used to send abroad for analysis can be analysed here at home, because we now have the facilities to do so.”
He said that these computers will also be very useful to the country because they will be analysing oil and gas data that were previously sent abroad. “
Doing so will save a lot of resources which were sent overseas to pay for the analysis of our various data.
Mshinda said that the technology among others will be beneficial to Tanzanians in terms of bio medical researches, and researches in human genes to detect the frequencies of hereditary diseases. It is also very potential in the exploration of oil and gas, because all data that were sent to abroad to spot whether there is oil or gas in a respective area will now be analysed locally.
And as a result, this will strengthen extra income to the institute.
“So, it is really in the cutting edge of science and technology. And it is also the foundation of science in future,” he revealed; urging Tanzanians to take the advantage of development in the ICT.
He said it was high time for the public to understand the importance of science and technology and use it to address the problems they are currently facing. It is also an opportunity for researchers to properly use this technology to venture into areas of work, of which one could not believe, can be done in the country.
High performance computing for public good workshop that brought together experts in high performance computing sector was organised under the aegis of the European Commission (EC) by DIT with the support of Sigma Orionis, the UbuntuNet Alliance and all el4Africa partners. The workshop was also co-hosted by COSTECH and the Tanzania Research and Education Network (TERNET).
SOURCE:
THE GUARDIAN
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