Over the past few weeks, Grade 8 students at The KAUST School have been diving into the world of journalism. They’ve explored different styles of writing and even set up their own media agencies to report on stories happening all around the KAUST community. From school sports and campus gardeners to cutting-edge science, coral restoration, and local start-ups — their coverage has been wide-ranging and full of energy.
Through interviews and hands-on research, these young journalists have shown real curiosity, creativity, and professionalism. As part of a fun competition, eight top articles have been chosen by TKS to appear in The LENS over the next month as part of the ‘KAUST through the lens of TKS students’. As a note, these articles reflect the students’ creative work as part of a school project and have been selected based on their creative writing skills. We hope you’ll enjoy reading their work and help us celebrate what they’ve accomplished!
“Most Powerful Supercomputer in the Middle East”: What is it?
– By Haniya Shehzad, Grade 8, The KAUST School
In 2023, the Shaheen III was deemed the most powerful supercomputer in the Middle East and the 20th most powerful on Earth. Built at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, the Shaheen supercomputer contributes to activities and projects at the university. On a recent Sunday, I paid a visit to the supercomputing team with a friend to find out more.
We reach KAUST University by bike, glancing around at the unfamiliar buildings before securing our bikes. We walk up to the doors of Building 1, where the supercomputing team operates. After heading up to the meeting point, we walked into the room to be introduced by Prof. David Keyes, a key team member. The door closes behind us as we sit for an enlightening and inspiring interview.
The Shaheen III is the third and latest of a series of supercomputers that began in 2009. The Shaheen III is 6 times faster than the Shaheen II and a whopping 150 times faster than the Shaheen I. So, we can clearly see that it must make outstanding contributions to KAUST and our work here. But is this the only reason that the Shaheen series was created?
The Motivation
Right off the bat, we asked Prof. Keyes for his motivation for the project. Prof. Keyes gave us a personal story to answer this question. He used to work at Columbia University in New York City, working at IBM on several initiatives, and found out that his collaborator was actually talking to the same university that he was about creating higher-performance computing facilities. At that time, he was very involved with the US Department of Energy and supercomputing. “When I found out King Abdullah was going to create a university built around supercomputing, I said, I want to be a part of that, so initially, I was a consultant to the founding provost on what he called the Cyberinfrastructure Advisory Committee.” He mentioned it being a very heady experience. They wanted to be a science-based, sustainability-focused university. Two-thirds of the faculty here have at least one member of their group who uses Shaheen III in their work, which is highly unusual. This was the environment that Prof. Keyes found most fruitful for a 21st-century university.
KAUST’s Dependence on Shaheen III
We moved on to talk about how Shaheen III helps us at KAUST. Did it actually pay off as much as they wanted it to? Well, one of the greatest qualities of the Shaheen III is its ability to conduct experiments that would’ve taken an abnormally long time. It can create simulations that mimic accurate results from other experiments, which helps to produce crucial results that assist many experimental projects at KAUST in engineering design and scientific discovery areas. Several departments, including the Climate Change Center, benefit from Shaheen III’s services. It also allows us to conduct experiments that would be impossible or extremely dangerous on Earth. For example, there is no way to do a physical experiment on supernovas. It can also be much more accurate using the supercomputer. For example, computer models can calculate some chemical bond energies more accurately than we can measure them in a laboratory.
The 2030 Vision
But does Shaheen III help anywhere beyond KAUST? Yes, the 2030 Vision is a government program that aims to increase economic diversification, among other goals. “Everything at KAUST is more or less aligned with the sustainability mandate of the Founding King, and if you look at the four pillars of the current Crown Prince…you find that the founding sustainability pillars align fairly well with those new pillars that are part of 2030.” KAUST aims to be a sustainable and renewable place, and we’ve clearly seen that in projects throughout recent years, such as NEOM. The Shaheen III supercomputer aims to help the sustainability projects and departments that support the 2030 vision. We found this particularly interesting to think about since the 2030 vision is a huge part of Saudi Arabia today and unites the projects and universities in the country, including KAUST.
Challenges and Limitations
But it’s not as easy as we’ve been saying – Prof. Keyes also revealed some of the computer’s challenges and threats. Having such a powerful supercomputer makes KAUST a target for cyber threats, demanding high security. The acquisition process is also extremely tedious – many devices must be purchased and tested to build a supercomputer. Prof. Keyes mentioned that the process takes months. But it’s definitely worth it – without the supercomputer, KAUST would probably be nowhere near the position it’s in today. After all, KAUST did win the #1 spot in The Arab University Rankings for two consecutive years in a row!
The Shaheen III is a considerable achievement, being the most powerful in the Middle East and the 20th most powerful in the world, and it significantly assists projects and activities happening at KAUST and Saudi Arabia. Although there are significant challenges to maintaining it, it’s definitely worth it.
Professor Keyes expects the Shaheen series will continue with upgrades over the years, so we can expect a Shaheen IV and Shaheen V. After all, as Prof Keyes informed us, the name “Shaheen” was selected to refer to the fastest of all animals, the falcon in its diving motion. To keep KAUST on pace with the fastest technology, refreshes are required.
We get up to leave, our heads buzzing. Thanking Prof. Keyes heartily, we exited the office and returned to school in avid discussion of the wonders and complexity of the many ground-breaking projects taking place at KAUST – not least the contribution and stories behind the most powerful supercomputer in the Middle East, Shaheen III.