And now for something completely different - only it is not.
ITWeb records more of the same-old-same-old ... (By Audra Mahlong, senior journalist, Johannesburg, 3 Mar 2010)

Local technology companies can expect increased access to procurement opportunities as the Department of Science and Technology (DST) attempts to boost local industries.

ITWeb has "SA's second satellite delivers", By Farzana Rasool, ITWeb journalist, Johannesburg, 24 Feb 2010

Sumbandila Images [The Bridle Drift Dam in East London as pictured by Sumbandila, South Africa's second satellite.]

SA received the first live images from its second satellite, Sumbandila, this week.

SA's progression into space started over a decade ago and the country expects to make further strides in this area, says Lunga Ngqengelele, acting head of communications for the Department of Science and Technology (DST).

These images represent just the first development expected from the satellite, adds Ngqengelele.

This is beautiful! Fantastic. Wonderful. I wish we could see the images in high-res!

ITWeb By Paul Vecchiatto, ITWeb Cape Town correspondent, Cape Town, 23 Feb 2010

While the Department of Science and Technology's (DST's) budget has been increased to R4.6 billion from R4.2 billion, there has been a rigorous pruning of most of its major programmes, says Democratic Alliance shadow deputy minister of science and technology Marian Shinn.

As a scientist all I can say is not in my name!

The Top 500 have published their results. The CHPC appears once again -> http://www.top500.org/site/history/3006

The following table shows previous lists and the number of systems installed when the list was published. Site Efficiency in the table is SUM(Rmax)/SUM(Rpeak), expressed as a percentage.

This is the Tsessebe SunBlade X6275 and X6250, Xeon X5570 and E5450 with Infiniband QDR/DDR

Our 16 core Tyan (GB Eth + 512 GB + Win HPC) does 43.7490 GFlop - that is 2.73 GFlop/core compared to 9.7 GFlop / core. We have 68.6% efficiency - I think it is due to the network being pedestrian.

OK CHPC you win on performance, but I bet we beat you on cost per GFlop and number of customers per GFlop :)

I guess that the CHPC will be out of the Top 500 in June.

computing (Written by Iain Thomson in San Francisco, 11 Feb 2010)

Sonas system will scale to 14 petabytes

IBM has introduced a network storage array based around its supercomputing platforms, and aimed at medium and large enterprises.

The Scale Out Network Attached Storage (Sonas) system uses between one and 30 storage 'pods' containing a storage node, a storage controller and 7,200 or 15,000 drives. These can be scaled up to a claimed 14.4 petabytes of storage.

According to one of the opposition parties South Africa does worse and worse every year in its ranking on benchmark indices. Now while I am sceptical of these indices, they are quite concerning. For example, if the developed world took its own medicine with regard to economic "reform" it will probably be in the poor-box too. To be concrete I heard that every kid in South Korea has a laptop to do their homework (Korea's "laptop penetration index" exceeds SA) - while this may make them better students, apparently they do not play outside. Dunno if this factoid is true, but it illustrates the point. I have fretted on indexes here, here, here, here, here and here.
I have not cited the source so as to prevent the messenger from detracting from the message - but I assume the research is correct.

ITWeb By Nicola Mawson, Johannesburg, 14 Jan 2010

The deal will see investment coming to SA, says HP's Manoj Bhoola.
Microsoft's $250 million collaboration with HP is set to benefit about 10 000 channel distributors in SA.

The deal, the largest to date in the companies' 25-year partnership, will also see some of the $250 million coming into SA in the form of marketing spend, skills development, and research and development investment.

ITWeb

Cloud computing has a bright future over the next four years, according to HP's VP and GM of software products, Robin Purohit.

Speaking at HP's annual Software Universe Conference, in Hamburg, Germany, Purohit said although HP is not here to hype the technology, cloud does have the potential to bring the agility and flexibility of a start-up into large organisations.
Click here

IT Web has an article of significant importance (rudely linked to another yoooohoooo! type press release from the DST saying look-how-clever-we-are). By Audra Mahlong, Johannesburg, 8 Dec 2009

The minister raises questions about SA's competitiveness and says R&D spending will be reviewed.

Science and technology minister Naledi Pandor has questioned investments in research and development (R&D), saying spending is not matching the country's aims to increase competitiveness.

This is a shocking admission. Not surprising though.

The BBChas a story about a prototype chip likely to find a role in data and hosting centres

Intel has unveiled a prototype chip that packs 48 separate processing cores on to a chunk of silicon the size of a postage stamp.

The Single-chip Cloud Computer (SCC), as it is known, contains 1.3 billion transistors, the tiny on-off switches that underpin chip technology.