Avinash Meetoo

Let us build a Smart Mauritius together

Computing

A Supercomputer for Mauritius

By 2 Comments

20150814-tianhe-2

(Tianhe-2, the most powerful supercomputer. China.)

For the past few months, the Mauritius Research Council has been working on the setting up of a National Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) in Mauritius. As a member of the committee, I have been thinking a lot about the importance of having supercomputing facilities in Mauritius.

Why do we need supercomputers?

  • Supercomputers are immensely powerful computers which can be used to perform simulations of various processes. For example, supercomputers are used to simulate airflow on an aircraft wing, particle movement during a nuclear blast, the interaction between molecules during a chemical reaction or the movement of bodies in space. Without supercomputers, the cost of getting these insights would be prohibitively high. Supercomputers allow us to understand very complex processes without having to actually do them thanks to simulation.
  • Supercomputers, being so powerful,  are also used to perform brute force calculations. One good example is trying to predict weather. The meteorological station has a myriad of sensors everywhere measuring temperature, wind speed, humidity, etc. and, from these millions of data points, calculations need to be done in order to know what will happen next. The difficulty, of course, is to come up with a solution quickly enough for this information to be useful to us.
  • Supercomputers allow us to learn and leverage molecular dynamics. As explained on Wikipedia, “Molecular dynamics (MD) is a computer simulation of physical movements of atoms and molecules in the context of N-body simulation. The atoms and molecules are allowed to interact for a period of time, giving a view of the motion of the atoms. In the most common version, the trajectories of atoms and molecules are determined by numerically solving the Newton’s equations of motion for a system of interacting particles, where forces between the particles and potential energy are defined by interatomic potentials or molecular mechanics force fields.” The interesting part is that, once someone knows about molecular dynamics, he/she can apply the principle in different fields.

What will we have to learn?

  • A supercomputer is, in essence, a computer with thousands if not millions of processors instead of the few we have in our normal computers. In order to use the capabilities of a supercomputer to the full, it is important that software applications be written to work concurrently. This means that, when run on a parallel computer such as a supercomputer, the software can distribute work over the myriad of processors instead of running on one processor only. From a technical perspective, this is difficult to achieve. For instance, when using C or C++, this can be done by leveraging the Open MPI library. When developing in Java, one can use the Concurrency Utilities. Software developers will have to learn how to use these powerful features and this is harder than it looks because it requires a change in mindset: thinking parallel instead of sequential is hard. Interestingly, when I was a lecturer at the University of Mauritius, I taught Concurrency and Parallelism to final year students so I may have a few things to contribute at this level.
  • A supercomputer is, in essence, a massive cluster running Linux. As everyone knows by now, Linux has eaten the world. And this is especially true for supercomputers where Linux powers 97% of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. For example, the most powerful supercomputer in the world, Tianhe-2, runs Kylin Linux. The next one, Titan, runs Cray Linux. The third one, Sequoia BlueGene/Q, also runs Linux. And so on and so forth. This means that the setting up of a supercomputer in Mauritius will require the expertise of a number of Linux system administrators who are comfortable with clustering and parallelism. Interestingly, at Knowledge Seven, we provide the best Linux courses in Mauritius.
  • Finally, our researchers will have to think out of the box. Simple problems with their simple solutions do not require the use of supercomputers. In order to fully utilise the immense power of supercomputers, we will have to start thinking about solving the big problems. This will require researchers to move out of their respective silos and work together. Naturally, this is because big problems are generally multi-disciplinary. This change in mindset will take some time as we, in Mauritius, love our respective silos and their associated benefits…

20150814-linux-superman

Is there a risk?

Yes, as frequently in Mauritius, we tend to focus on the hardware and software and forget that the most important component is peopleware. If our decision makers, our researchers, our developers and our sysadmins do not know how to leverage a supercomputer, then it is useless to have one in the country, gathering dust and quickly becoming obsolete while costing millions.

To prevent this kind of situation, the Mauritius Research Council is organising an Awareness Workshop on High Performance Computing (HPC) in Mauritius from 26 to 28 August 2015 where those who might benefit from supercomputing will be able to talk with those who offer supercomputing solutions. I understand that invitations to participate in the workshop will be sent shortly. On Thursday 27 August from 11:15 – 12:15, I will moderate a session for various organisations who will be able to come and explain what problems they are trying to solve and how they intend to leverage supercomputing facilities in the future.

The new Mauritian National Identity Card

By 57 Comments

As from 1st October 2013, all citizens of the Republic of Mauritius, who already have an ID card, should replace it with a new ID card.

The vision

The Government wants to provide all Mauritians with a high-security ID card linked to a new population database to serve as an ID document to prove identity and to allow more secure and reliable access to government e-services.

With this new form of identification and authentication, we will only need to carry one identity document instead of multiple documents. Maybe we won’t need to have our driving licenses with us all the time as all policemen will have identity card readers and real-time access to the population database. Another stated benefit is that people will also be able to access Governmental eservices at home or at work using their personal identity card readers.

What data is stored?

As pictured above, the following information is going to be printed on the front of the card:

  • A black and white photo
  • The ID Number
  • Surname, first name and surname at birth
  • Gender (“M”, “F”)
  • Date of birth
  • Signature
  • SC logo for Senior Citizens to access benefits such as the bus pass

On the back of the card, we will have:

  • A barcode, presumably to make the ID card number easier to read by a machine
  • A card control number, presumably to check whether the ID card number (encoded in the barcode) has been read properly
  • The ID Number of the person again
  • The Date of issue
  • The name in case there is not enough space to print the name on the front side of the card

In addition to the printed information, the ID card is a smart card and contains a chip which will store the following data:

  • The photo, ID number, surname, first name, surname at birth, gender, date of birth
  • The residential address
  • Four fingerprint templates (2 thumb and 2 index fingerprints by default)
  • A digital certificate

Note that the residential address is not printed on the card. Someone stealing your ID card won’t know where you live…

What is a fingerprint template?

The chip will only store a mathematical model (i.e. a “template”) of the fingerprint, not an actual image. This is mainly for two reasons: (1) the amount of data to be stored is smaller and (2) this makes for faster processing time.

My interpretation of this is that someone accessing a very secure e-service will have to go through a two-step authentication procedure. First, the person will have to insert the ID card in an identity card reader to prove ownership of the card. Secondly, the person will have to scan his fingerprint to prove his identity. This eliminates the case of someone stealing the card of someone else and impersonating him or her. Could this two-step authentication be done otherwise i.e. without resorting to fingerprints? Yes, by using, say, retinal scanners or similar invasive and expensive techniques. My point is that fingerprints are not that bad…

What about data safety?

A digital certificate is stored in the chip of the ID card. This is to ensure that an identity card reader can only read the data on an ID card when validated through the Mauritius National Identity Scheme (MNIS) Certificate Authority. In other words, all stored data is encrypted on the ID card and can only be unencrypted by an identity card reader if and only if the MNIS Certificate Authority approves that.

Furthermore, the whole system is protected by security appliances, access controls mechanisms, security policies, physical security, etc.

It looks like a lot of thoughts has gone into making the system as secure as possible.

The new ID card will only justify its high cost when…

This new ID card will cost a fortune and people need to understand that it is only a means of identifying and authenticating someone.

We will only have a good return on this massive investment if and only if most Governmental services become e-services. It’s high time that we, Mauritians, stop wasting our time having to go to Port-Louis, Phoenix or Ebène just to submit a form. Will this happen soon? I have some doubts…

In conclusion

  • The ID card is nothing to worry about in principle.
  • Most Governmental services need to become e-services soon or else we’re just wasting tons on money.

[All pictures courtesy of the Mauritian National Identity Card website]

An interview with Vint Cerf in Mauritius

By 2 Comments

Engineering is the art of turning science fiction into reality says Dr Vinton (Vint) Cerf, one of the inventors of the Internet and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google.

On 10 September 2013, Christina and Avinash Meetoo of Knowledge Seven (at that time) did an interview with Vint Cerf. He talks about the importance of the Internet, creativity, entrepreneurship and what young Mauritians should aspire to. He puts a lot of emphasis on good education and the need to really master science, mathematics and, specifically, engineering.

He strongly believes that competent Mauritian engineers can make a difference.

Here is a full transcript of the interview:

Avinash Meetoo, Founder and CEO of Knowledge Seven:

Thank you Dr Cerf for accepting this interview.

I know you have been quite hectic those few days with the conference going on and, for us at Knowledge Seven, it was important to be able to talk to you. Specially given that there are a lot of young people in Mauritius and, for many reasons, maybe they won’t have the opportunity to hear from you. So we want to give you the possibility to talk to those young people because at the end of the day, those young people are going to rule the world one of these days.

So we asked a few of our employees, our young employees, for some questions and one of them asked us “What did you want to become when you were a kid?”

Dr Vinton (Vint) Cerf, one of the inventors of the Internet and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google:

When I was a young child, about ten years old, I knew I wanted to be a scientist. There was no question about that. I read books about science and I got a chemistry set. And so I had an opportunity to experiment with all kinds of interesting chemicals. And I can tell you in 1953, you got a lot more interesting chemicals in a chemistry set than you get today. Things that would blow up. It was great. So I was always interested in mathematics, I liked chemistry, I liked physics. I would read Scientific American. I always knew I was gonna be a scientist. I just didn’t know what kind.

Avinash:

And then a few years afterwards, you invented TCP/IP together with Bob Kahn. The question is: how come you came across this so wonderful suite of protocols called TCP/IP? How come you came up with something which is so resilient, so good that, until now, it’s working so well?

Vint:

So, first of all, we were faced with solving a particular problem. We had multiple computer networks that we needed to interconnect to each other and make it look like one big uniform network and to suppress all the differences. So we were really focused on the engineering problem. And in a sense, the solution just comes out of the problem itself. If you’re lucky to express the problem in a way that exposes the solution, then you just go and build it and make it work, which is basically what we did. Now, to be honest, it took ten years between 1973 and 1983 to refine the answer, to the point where we could turn the network on, which we did in 1983. So what you’re running today is a solution that started literally 30 years ago.

Avinash:

But did you expect the Internet to become so massive as it is today?

Vint:

Absolutely. I mean our entire design was built around the idea that if someone could build a piece of Internet according to our design and find someone to connect you, that it would work and so the network really grew in an organic way with people building pieces of it, finding someone to connect you and then allowing the system to expand. So, it’s been growing ever since it is turned on.

Christina Meetoo, Senior Lecturer at the University of Mauritius:

I would just like to ask you a naive question. We’ve learned that you are Chief Evangelist at Google. So, what does a Chief Evangelist do? What’s the typical day of a Chief Evangelist?

Vint:

So, it’s very interesting: the title was Chief Internet Evangelist. So, I only evangelize about the Internet. My primary job is to find a way to get more Internet built all around the world.

That’s one reason why I’m here in Mauritius. We spoke with the President yesterday. There’s no question that communications, networking, education and electrical power, and reliable environments are necessary for taking advantage of the Internet.

A typical day for me involves a speech or two. It might mean meeting with a few scientists or engineers who have ideas that they would like to discuss, some people who aspire to buy a company or to license the latest patent or design. I spend time on university campuses talking to young people about the problems that still remain with the Internet that need to be solved. Some of them are really hard. You would get a PhD dissertation by solving those problems. The idea is to get those problems in front of people who want to try finding hard things to solve. So I spend good deal of time doing that.

I spend time with policy makers in government, trying to help shape the policy that will allow more Internet to be built, to allow for competition, to allow openness, so that anyone with a new idea to build an application, puts it on the net, and lets someone else get access to it, which is where Google came from: an idea from two students at Stanford who just put it up on the net and it just grew.

Avinash:

And how do you see things evolving in small countries like Mauritius? Africa? Compared to what is happening in the US?

Vint:

Well, first of all, remember that the US started in the same kind of way that you’re starting. Everyone starts small and then you grow. So, Mauritius is no different. You need to have reliable power. You need to have not only engineers but you need to have business people, sales people, marketing people, you have to have people who know how to run a business. You have to have people thinking about marketing to the rest of the world as well as the domestic economy in order to take advantage of the bigger economy. After all there’s only about 1.3 million people. So you need to be thinking outside as well.

The universities have to be very diverse in terms of what they can produce. You have to have these policies that will invite people to come into the country to participate with you in growing these capabilities. Some people worry that, oh, we’re too late. The Internet’s been around for forty years and we’re too late. You’re never too late. You’re always starting with everybody else with the next thing that happens, the next design, the next invention, the next information technologies.

So, just get on the wagon, keep going with everybody else.

Avinash:

There are a number of people who say (and sometimes I’m among them) that our education system in Mauritius tends to create people who are really really passive. Do you think that, because of the Internet, things are going to change quickly? People are going to become more and more active, will discover what their passion really is?

Vint:

This is a cultural question. And it’s very hard for me to answer that. I can say that the more you know, the more curiosity you have, the more your curiosity is satisfied by being able to get answers on the net. Perhaps that will be an incitement, even to see what other young people are doing around the world. Watching YouTube and things like that may cause our younger people to feel empowered and to do something. But in terms of being, you know, aggressive about pursuing ideas, as part of your cultural setup, you need to reinforce the feasibility of exploring new ideas.

Avinash:

Do you think that in the coming years, countries where creativity is valued are going to have an advantage other those countries…

Vint:

Let me explain this to you. The incidence of smart and creative people is constant per thousand in population everywhere in the world. So, the distribution is the same everywhere. Whether they get an opportunity to explore that creativity and inventiveness is a different question. What is the environment like? Are they encouraged? Do they have resources to explore? But the actual native capability to invent and create is the same everywhere. So, you should not lose track of the fact that you have your share of inventive and creative people.

Avinash:

We know, because we have been reading on the net, that you’re working right now on Interplanetary Internet, the Internet between Earth and Mars. Can you tell us a few words about it?

Vint:

Well, first of all, we concluded some fifteen years ago that we should have rich communication capability for exploring the solar system with robotic spacecraft and manned spacecraft. And so our intent is to provide networking capability that will allow these various devices to communicate with each other the same way we communicate across the Internet on Earth. So that system is actually in operation now between Earth and Mars. We have orbiters, satellites in orbit around Mars, talking to the robots on the ground; all that data is getting back to Earth. They stay in communication with devices sitting on the international space station. Then there is a spacecraft in orbit around the sun called EPOXI which has visited two comets in the last ten years. And it too has been outfitted with interplanetary capability.

So, what we intend to do is to keep launching satellites with these new communication protocols. And as time goes on, we’ll build an interplanetary backbone to support manned and robotic space exploration.

Avinash:

Do you think that people are going to go on Mars in the coming years or is it going to take…

Vint:

You know. There’s a lot that has to happen in order to support a manned mission to Mars. We have to support life for nine months to get there. Then some six months to be on the planet. And then to come back, that’s another nine months. It’s a three year mission. There’s a lot still to be learned until we know how to keep people safe.

So, for my money, I’d rather send robots out there for now to learn as much as possible about what the environment is like before we try to send people.

Christina:

How do you see the Internet evolving in the future? When you were working on TCP/IP, I imagine you didn’t think about how it would be so far-reaching. What you’re working on right now, do you think it’s going to be the same?

Vint:

Well, first of all, we did know what was going to happen. We had a pretty good idea. I won’t have time to give you all the background but a lot of the applications that you see today, we were doing thirty years ago, just not so much.

And it is capacity that has allowed everyone to take advantage of things like email which was invented in 1971. Laptops were actually thought in 1972. Workstations, desktop machines were in use in 1973; it’s just that they cost 50,000 dollars each.

So speed and cost, higher speed, lower cost have contributed to what you see today.

Mobiles are the natural result of reduced size, reduced power requirements, reduced cost. So, looking towards the future, there’s no question that every appliance that we have around the house, in the office, in the car, that we’re carrying with us, will be Internet-capable and be communicating with each other and will be responsive to the questions that we ask and to control, commands that we give.

Our computers will be part of our sensory environment. We’ll allow our computer to be with us, seeing what we’re seeing, hearing what we’re hearing, being our partner in our interactions with the world. Virtual reality and augmented reality will be part of the normal thing. Google glasses will let you see information when you’re looking at some real thing. All that’s absolutely clear.

Medical instrumentation will be everywhere. We’ll be very instrumented. Our bodies will be examined and monitored 24 hours a day. In which case, if there are any problems, you’ll become more aware much earlier than if you had to wait till you get sick to go to the doctor and find out you have a problem.

Avinash:

There’s this initiative: the quantified self…

Vint:

That’s exactly the quantified self. So we have a lot to look forward to neural electronics, cochlear implants, ocular implants, spinal implants to recover the use of arms and organs that we are looking into because of spinal injury. All that is absolutely clearly in the future and not all that many years.

Avinash:

So, speaking of Google, which is quite different from other technological companies because instead of focusing on technology for the sake of technology, you do technology as a means for people to have a better life, for instance self-driven cars, etc. Do you know if Google has plans for Mauritius right now?

Vint:

We don’t have specific plans for Mauritius. We have an interest in general in Africa. We have incited some businesses to start in Kenya. For example, there’s activities in TV white spaces which is a new way of getting access to the Internet and that’s happening in South Africa. So we have a real interest.

One of the reasons of coming here is to find out more about Mauritius, what the conditions are, how trained are the people, what is the connectivity, communications capability, availability of power. So all those things are part of the story of figuring out what are the things to do here.

But we believe that access to the Internet gives you access to everything Google has available and you can build on top of that platform as many other people have. You know it’s a way for us to show what’s already there if you can get good access to the Internet.

Avinash:

And a last question: do you have any specific message for young people in Mauritius who are going to watch this video later?

Vint:

Yes I do. First of all, I want you to take the time to learn about science, mathematics, engineering. You have an opportunity to make a difference in the world. I happen to be an engineer. The secret to engineering is turning science fiction into reality. That’s what engineering does. You can do that too. But you have to stay in school and you have to learn and you have to apply what you’ve learned.

Maybe you’ll change the world too.