{"id":649952,"date":"2026-06-07T10:59:55","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T08:59:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=649952"},"modified":"2026-06-07T11:06:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T09:06:00","slug":"south-africa-reusing-decommissioned-supercomputer-hardware-to-compete-on-the-global-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/science\/649952-south-africa-reusing-decommissioned-supercomputer-hardware-to-compete-on-the-global-stage.html","title":{"rendered":"South Africa reusing decommissioned supercomputer hardware to compete on the global stage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

South African researchers are reusing decommissioned supercomputer hardware to bolster the country’s high-performance computing infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An initiative led by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) sees this retired research computing hardware used at the University of the Witwatersrand and at institutions across Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In February, CSIR senior engineer and lead mentor at the High Performance Computing (HPC) Ecosystems Project, Samuel Mathekga, delivered previously decommissioned servers to the university.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These were HPC models designed to run on research-grade Dell M1000e servers, which Wits will use for artificial intelligence and other high-performance computing tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mathekga explained that the decommissioned hardware donated by the HPC Ecosystems Project comes from various sources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Some are from the Square Kilometre Array project, some are from in-house at the CSIR, and some are from other high-performance institutions across the world,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project, an international effort to build the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope, has South Africa hosting one of its major telescopes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the SKA project did not directly provide any decommissioned hardware, the CSIR said it funded the redeployment of the supercomputer modules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wits is just one hub to which the HPC Ecosystems Project sent the decommissioned hardware, according to Project Lead and CSIR senior technologist Bryan Johnston.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Over its first decade, the project redeployed 35 entry-level HPC systems across 11 African countries,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It paired each installation with skills transfer through more than 30 formal training workshops for over 700 participants.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johnston explained that the result was a set of locally run HPC hubs across the continent, linked by a shared software and an active community of practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said that the rollout strengthens regional cyberinfrastructure readiness and enables African teams to participate in data and compute-intensive research at a global level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Decommissioned hardware allowed Wits to compete internationally<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Samuel Mathekga, CSIR senior engineer and lead mentor at the HPC Ecosystems Project.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Student-led teams in African countries are using the HPC hardware to compete at an international level in global HPC competitions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“They are an example of how, being provided with access to HPC, they’ve been able to fly and do their own thing. They’ve now built a pipeline of talent,” said Johnston.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Wits, the HPC and Big Data Interest Group recently attended an international competition using the CSIR-provided hardware as its infrastructure backbone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The student-led group used the hardware to run massively complex weather simulations, protein-folding problems, and fluid dynamics models.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The protein folding example was exciting for me because it was the first time I saw my visualisation at one of these competitions,” said Wits student Kevin Ebrahim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It was very eye-opening to see all the work that went into just a simple video clip of the protein folding.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reinhard Jansen van Vuuren, a senior member of the Wits HPC group, said the team’s weather simulations were important for understanding climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“In these simulations, you’re able to predict heatwaves, storms, rain, and different pressures in certain areas,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“All of these are then combined to provide not only visuals, but also data to predict natural disasters.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said that the collaboration with the CSIR and the HPC Ecosystems Project was the backbone of the group, and the reason Wits can do the teaching and competitions it can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The resources we have from them are what we use to teach, to train and to learn, and it allowed us to build a little ecosystem within Wits.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Internationally, the HPC Ecosystems Project has evolved into a global ecosystem and has won international awards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The project aimed to begin sending decommissioned HPC hardware to Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) after a need was identified there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has deployed infrastructure across the continent, including South Africa, Madagascar, Mauritius, Malawi, Lesotho, Eswatini, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Kenya.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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CSIR-delivered HPC hardware<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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South African researchers are recycling decommissioned supercomputer hardware to bolster the country\u2019s high-performance computing infrastructure and better compete internationally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341213,"featured_media":649955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31750],"tags":[105506,3446,225,105505,105503,105502,105507,105504,1239,1243],"class_list":["post-649952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","tag-bryan-johnston","tag-csir","tag-dell","tag-dell-m1000e","tag-high-performance-computing-2","tag-hpc","tag-reinhard-jansen-van-vuuren","tag-samuel-mathekga","tag-ska","tag-square-kilometre-array"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649952"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649952"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":650655,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649952\/revisions\/650655"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}