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Intel kits out Karoo communities, teaches them about SKA

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is one of the most ambitious tech projects in the country, and will help put SA in the international astronomy limelight. But what about the tiny towns that are near the heart of this stargazing operation? For them, life in the Karoo will be far more interesting, being a stone’s throw away from the world’s largest radio telescope array, and Intel is going to make sure that the towns don’t get left behind.

To that end, the chipmaker will be bringing its technology to the towns of Carnarvon, Williston, and Vanwyksvlei, in the Northern Cape. Five schools and the Carnarvon community centre will be supplied with educational materials, computers, and internet access, while teachers at those institutions will also be equipped to deal with the new technology.

As part of the SKA e-schools project, a total of R2.5-million will be spent on supplying ten classrooms with printers, servers, and ClassMate computers. Teachers will also be supplied with laptops – and the skills to use them – to help integrate with the solutions offered by Intel, and the Carnarvon high school will be supplied a mobile science lab from SmartLabs.

The SKA project, which will be hosted in South Africa and Australia, is a radio telescope with a collecting area of approximately one square kilometre – basically, a bigger earth-based eye to observe the universe. It’ll be 50 times more sensitive than other radio instruments, thanks to a wider range of frequencies. SKA will also require a lot of backhaul bandwidth: the amount of data collected per second will be more than the entire current capacity for internet traffic.

Construction will be begin in 2016, with first operations expected in 2019. Full operation will begin when construction completes in 2024.

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