campusreview.com.au
Rise of the supercomputers
ON CAMPUS
20
M @hpc_geek
The big
universities
are investing
in machines
that handle
mindboggling
amounts of
data; security
and efficiency
help maximise
their potential
to promote
research.
Andrew
Underwood
interviewed by
James Wells
P
urchasing a supercomputer is a
trend, among the universities that
can afford it. But a Dell executive has
warned they attract hackers and foreign
government agencies like moths to a flame.
“We do know scientific data is very
valuable, to both hackers and government
agencies,” said Andrew Underwood,
leader of Dell’s high-performance
computing, cognitive computing, and
high-performance data analysis Asia-Pacific
team. “Therefore, [protecting the data is]
always a core focus for us.”
Monash University was the latest
institution to install one of the machines,
bringing its supercomputer count to three.
MASSIVE-3 costs $4.1 million and has
roughly a billion times more processing
power than the average household laptop.
It’s also full of valuable data, including that
from ANZ Bank.
The University of Sydney also has a
supercomputer, Artemis, which contains
genetic code sequences of the West
African Ebola virus. USYD will soon triple
this computer’s processing power. The
University of Tasmania, the University
of Western Australia, the University of
Southern Queensland, and the University
of Adelaide are also preparing to install, or
have installed, supercomputers for research.
The CSIRO uses the supercomputer
Pearcey for its research.
Underwood said MASSIVE-3’s
cybersecurity revolves around on-demand
data encryption, which Dell provides.
Though a push to install mandatory
backdoors into encrypted data, led by
the US and Russian governments, could
jeopardise data security. Keys Under