Swinburne University gets new supercomputer
A new supercomputer is set to be up and running by 2023 at the Swinburne University of Technology Hawthorn campus. Research on space technology, medicine, and the environment will be the main priorities.
The new supercomputer, which will be named by Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung traditional owners, is valued at $18.5 million, with $5.2 million being an investment from the Victoria government. The remaining value will come from the Australian federal government, and operational costs and costs related to staff will be the responsibility of the university and its partners.
As a result, there will be 65 jobs across data, research, and software, as well as 20 PhD positions. A total of 250 students from primary to university level will have opportunities through STEM outreach programs as well as partnership with industry and startups.
Swinburne will run a tender process for provision of the computer hardware. The exact capacity will depend on the technology proposed by vendors, a spokesperson told Computerworld Australia.
This isn’t the university’s first supercomputer; it currently has one called OzStar, which was up and running in 2017 and has about 6,000 CPU cores, 300 GPUs, and 12 PiB of data storage. The storage environment and part of the OzStar CPUs and GPUs will be incorporated into the environment of the new supercomputer to further boost capacity.
More telco infrastructure and satellites
Telstra has announced it will build and manage the ground infrastructure and fibre network in Australia for global communications company Viasat’s ViaSat-3 global terabit-class satellite system.
Telstra said in a statement it will colocate Viasat’s satellite access node (SAN) equipment at hundreds of sites across Australia and will build and manage high-speed fibre links to each site. The network will connect the SAN sites to multiple redundant data centres that will house the core networking equipment needed to manage the expected increase in data traffic.
Telstra will also build intercity dual fibre paths, adding up to 20,000 new route-kilometres to increase the capacity of Telstra’s existing optical fibre network. The low-latency fibre will enable transmission rates of up to 650Gbps and will enable express connectivity between capital cities up to 55Tbps per fibre pair capacity on routes such as Sydney-Melbourne; Sydney-Brisbane, and Perth-ydney. According to Telstra, this will be more than six times today’s typical capacity of 8.8Tbps per fibre pair.
Separately, Mitsubishi Electric has joined Optus, Raytheon Australia, and Thales Australia as part of the AusSat group that is responsible for manufacturing the next generation of Ministry of Defence satellites.
Melbourne gets tech hub
Indonesia-based e-commerce company Bukalapak plans to establish a research and development centre in Melbourne. This technology hub is expected to create 65 jobs over five years and will create a team of senior level engineers to focus on analytics, AI, and R&D activities.