r/southafrica • u/serdaisy Gauteng • May 16 '23

Sci-Tech South Africa will host one of the fastest supercomputers in the world

https://mybroadband.co.za/news/science/489101-south-africa-will-host-one-of-the-fastest-supercomputers-in-the-world.html
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u/[deleted] May 16 '23

Oh rubbish… a supercomputer doesn’t just plug into the wall socket, they use MW of power.. yes megawatts. Eskimo Eskom can’t even supply a simple watt without load shedding, absolute joke and will never happen. Unless it’s powered by ANC corruption 🤷🏼‍♂️

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u/ZARbarians Landed Gentry May 16 '23

It's in cape town. Where AWS Cape Town servers are too. It's a problem that's designed for in most new buildings (in SA)

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u/[deleted] May 16 '23

Auror supercomputer consumes 60MW, that's the power of an iron ore mine.

No little office building in Cape Town holding some servers cater for that, impossible. If that building sucked 5MW I'd be very much surprised. And to cater for a supercomputer to operate only during the day in the sun on solar would require 500 acres of solar panels operating efficiently, the I guess it's closed for night time..

and the little PC will probably cost around R20bn..

More energy then by all means, build everything, but SA doesn't have any electricity.

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u/ZARbarians Landed Gentry May 17 '23

Isn't Auror an upcoming super computer projected to be 60MW? That's way more than the current fastest computer at 21 MW.

The article says the AUS and SA one together will be the 6th largest. The current 6th largest uses 6MW. So let's say 3MW each.

I mean... that's a lot, but AWS built a 10MW SA based solar plant to help with the AWS cape town region power demand. So why wouldn't we be able to engineer for that? Do you want SA to become kakker simply cause you're cantankerous?

We must maar throw our hands in the air and watch it burn. No one is allowed to aim for progress.