Medea University First to Introduce High Performance Computing (HPC) Service in Algerian University

Medea University First to Introduce High Performance Computing (HPC) Service in Algerian University

Posted on: 13 Dec, 2023

Medea University « Yahia Fares » has acquired powerful supercomputers as first of 19 Algerian academic institutions in Algeria’s quest to boost scientific research. A national programme, overseen by the Directorate of Research and Technological Development, under the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, will provide several universities with high-performance computing (HPC) service which will allow researchers to carry out their work in the most advanced areas. Today, HPC has become essential in most fields of science and research.

Dr. Abdelhak Fareh from the Department of Computer Science at University of Medea does not hide his enthusiasm. "This is the first supercomputer that the University of Medea receives and it will be very beneficial in our research projects, both in terms of compute-intensive, simulation and modelling," he says. It is a comprehensive programme that is "currently at a regional level but a list of other universities that receive the same equipment is developed," he continued. You should know that supercomputers are used for all tasks that require very high computing power such as weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modelling and calculation of structures and properties of chemical compounds, as well as physical simulations such as aerodynamic simulations, calculations of strength of materials, etc. Among the projects that have already begun to use the HPC, researchers work on the optimization of photovoltaic cells for solar power.*

Aouaouche El-Maouhab, General Manager of DZ e-Science GRID and ARN at CERIST who attended the launch of  HPC at University of Medea on 11 February 2013, announced the plan to extend the DZ e-Science GRID infrastructure to all HPC infrastructures and encouraged researchers with similar research interests to work together to establish scientific communities with common requirements and objectives.

Algeria has recently upgraded the international connectivity available for its scientists and academicians to 622 Mbps through its participation in EUMEDCONNECT3, the regional high-capacity Internet network serving the research and education (R&E) communities across Northern Africa and the Middle East. Algeria is a long-term partner in the EC-funded EUMEDCONNECT project and has seen its research network ARN capacity increase by a factor of 15 - from an initial 45 Mbps in 2004 to the current 622 Mbps to meet researchers’ growing demands for high-speed international connectivity, including geographically distributed HPC activities.

About DZ e-Science GRID

The DZ e-Science GRID is an initiative funded by the Algerian Ministry for Higher Education and Scientific Research and has been operated since 2006 by the Networks Division at the Research Centre on Scientific and Technical Information (CERIST). The main objective is to set up a Grid infrastructure and Grid computing services for scientific communities with high computing and storage requirements. The certification authority DZ e-Science CA was launched in 2011 and is fully operational with accreditation from the European organisation EugridPMA which coordinates the trust fabric for e-Science authentication in Europe and collaborates with the regional peers APGridPMA for the Asia-Pacific and the Americas GRID PMA in the International Grid Trust Federation. The DZ e-Science GRID is part of the Algerian Research Network ARN services and participated in EUMEDGRID and EPIKH EC/FP7 projects. For more information, visit www.grid.arn.dz

About ARN

ARN is the Algerian NREN (National Research & Education Network) funded by the Algerian Ministry for Higher Education and Scientific Research.  Operated since 1994 by the Networks Division at the Research Centre on Scientific and Technical Information (CERIST), ARN is connecting 110 institutions: all universities, research centers, high schools. ARN is built on a national backbone with 10 PoPs and is using two international links with 1.4 Gbps: one to the GEANT Pan-European Research and Education Network (622 Mbps) through the EUMEDCONNECT3 project and another link for commodity Internet with commercial providers (777 Mbps). For more information, visit www.arn.dz.