The CHPC National conference took place in the first week of December, and it had some interesting talks. All the Videos are viewable on YouTube

https://www.chpcconf2021.co.za/

The last keynote was by Prof Thomas Sterling, of Indiana University, where in a wide-ranging retrospective of HPC technology, he talked at the end about :-

https://events.chpc.ac.za/event/98/contributions/1535/

• “A brief discussion of early attempts of memory-centric computing such as SIMD and PIM will motivate revolutionary concepts of the future. Questions from the audience will be welcome assuming remote communication technology permits.”

You can watch his presentation here.

I have been assisting in a remote workshop for the next scientists in Biology, CCP4 Crystallographic School in South Africa remotely taught from Diamond Light Source.

I work at the Electron Microscope Unit, at the University of Cape Town. This uses electron microscopes, which are different instruments to the Xray microscopy gear below.

X-Ray facilities require Synchrotrons which are expensive enough to be national facilities. We are using the UK national facility at Harwell. It was formerly the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, which was created after the Second World War on the site of RAF Harwell.