11 February 2010 - Speech By RADM(NS) Ronnie Tay, Chief Executive Officer, Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, at Official Launch Of NTU's High-Performance Centre
Speech By RADM(NS) Ronnie Tay, Chief Executive Officer, Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, at Official Launch Of NTU’s High-Performance Centre, 11 February 2010, NTU High Performance Computing Centre
Professor Bertil Andersson, NTU Provost,
Ms Teresa Lim, Managing Director, IBM,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Good morning,
1. It is a great pleasure for me to be here today to witness the opening of the High Performance Computing Centre here at NTU. This is indeed a significant milestone for the R&D fraternity in Singapore.
2. This development will be a boost to Singapore's infocomm ecosystem. At IDA, we envision a vibrant infocomm ecosystem that promotes innovation and collaboration, enabling the development of a wide range of infocomm solutions to draw on Singapore's competitive strengths. This, we try to achieve through three thrusts; first, encouraging sophisticated demand for infocomm among our businesses and consumers, second, strengthening Singapore as an economic hub; third, fostering the creation of innovative services and knowledge capital by enterprises and research institutions.
3. While the MNCs, local infocomm enterprises, and start-ups co-exist as the engine to drive the growth of the industry, our research institutions also form a key part of the infocomm ecosystem. They catalyse the development of new ideas and technologies, which will be used in the creation of innovative services and knowledge capital to meet the sophisticated demand for infocomm products, services and solutions, locally and in the global marketplace. The advent of high performance computing allows the research institutions to generate and analyse massive data sets and build new networking and storage capabilities. This in turn helps them to accelerate innovation, create important new knowledge and thereby reduce time-to-market for new products and services.
4. HPC developments such as the setting up of NTU's HPC Centre in Singapore, will indeed add tremendously to the development of a vibrant infocomm system in Singapore. It will help to put Singapore at the forefront of R&D, supporting the growth of our infocomm industry and creation of new intellectual property. This will give Singapore, and in particular our businesses, a competitive edge in an increasingly globalised market environment.
5. Significantly, the NTU HPC Centre is also listed as the 24th most energy efficient system on the global Green 500 list. Green ICT is a major focus for the ICT industry given the global concern with environmental protection and sustainability. The HPC community has the new challenge of creating green HPC systems that are able to perform at the same, or even higher levels, while using less energy. The NTU HPC Centre has succeeded in doing this through the clever integration of systems that allows it to reduce its electricity consumption without compromising performance.
6. IDA is encouraged to see the adoption of such green technologies in the industry. We are interested in supporting the development of green capabilities and adoption of technologies that enable sustainability. For example, IDA is working with the national IT Standards Committee to develop a Green Data Centre standard for use in Singapore. The standard will help organisations establish systems and processes necessary to improve the energy efficiency of their data centres by providing them with a recognised framework and a methodology to achieve continuous improvement in their DC facilities. The aim of the project is to nurture a support ecosystem around Green DCs to boost the adoption of greener and more efficient data centres.
7. IDA is also open to working with firms to examine the potential for using Singapore as a living lab to demonstrate the technical and financial feasibility of Next Generation green-enabling ICT technologies which promise to boost efficiency, cut costs and lower emissions.
8. Fostering synergies among different players in the infocomm ecosystem will increase its vibrancy, and also lead to new business opportunities. The collaboration between NTU, IBM, Red Hat and Jardine One Solution, that has made the NTU HPC Centre possible, is a good example of that. We encourage more industry players to come together to advance high value research activities, and hence enable innovation in the infocomm ecosystem and the development of transformational technological capabilities.
9. On this note, I congratulate NTU and all your partners on the launch of this High Performance Computing Centre and wish you every success in your R&D endeavours.
.webp)