High Performance Computing Serving Research Productivity, Innovation and Excellence Compute Canada is a national organization that coordinates and promotes the use of High Performance Computing (HPC) in Canadian research. In collaboration with Canada’s seven university-based HPC consortia, it works to ensure that Canadian researchers have the computational facilities and expert services necessary to advance scientific knowledge and innovation. It promotes HPC among the research community and its stakeholders as well as among the public in general and advises Canadian research funding agencies, at both the federal and provincial levels, on HPC issues. Quick Facts Number of researchers using HPC resources – approximately 4000 Number of disciplines supported – 22 major categories – from aerospace to medical imaging to weather forecasting and climate studies HPC (High Performance Computing) – Sometimes used as a synonym for "supercom- puting", HPC provides high speed computing via multiple processors, most often hundreds but sometimes thousands, harnessed together via fast communications pipelines and cluster software that work together as if they were one big machine. HPC facilities perform at least 100 times faster than today's desktop computers. 110 O’Connor St. 4th floor Ottawa, Ontario K1P 5M9 Phone: 613-594-9542 Fax: 613-594-3947 Email: [email protected] ii If Google is a search engine for all that is known – then HPC is a search engine for all that is unknown. Focusing on Priorities: The CFI led a collaborative initiative … to create a national HPC network across Canada. … This trans-continental HPC system [Compute Canada] will link virtually all of Canada’s research-intensive institutions, and will do for Canada’s knowledge-intensive economy of the 21st century what the building of a trans-continental railway did for the natural resource and industrial economies of centuries past. (CFI, InnovatioNation, Fall/Winter 08) “Grand Challenge” means a fundamental problem in science or engineering [climate change, pandemics], with broad economic and scientific impact, whose solution will require the application of high-performance computing resources and multidisciplinary teams of researchers. (U.S. High Performance Computing Act) “Supercomputing is part of the corporate arsenal to beat rivals by staying one step ahead of the innovation curve”. (From “The New Secret Weapon”, August 2008, the Council on Competitiveness) 1 Message from the Chair of the Board and the Executive Director Compute Canada is the culmination of almost a decade of effort by the many dedicated members of C3.ca. We owe them a debt of gratitude and offer them our sincere thanks for making Compute Canada a reality. The past year has been a very busy one as Compute Canada was formally launched, and an Executive Director and an independent Chair of the Board of Directors are now in place. In addition to the well-established National Initiatives Committee, chaired by David Sénéchal (Université de Sherbrooke), and the National Administration Committee, chaired by Judith Chadwick (University of Toronto), we have established an Executive Committee of the Board, the National Resource Allocation Committee (Gren Patey, University of British Columbia, Chair) and the Community Planning and Advocacy Council. The Technical Steering Committee, with support from technical advisors from the regional consortia, has developed a Compute Canada on-line database that is now operational. HPC equipment, purchased with funding from CFI and the provincial governments, with additional support from equipment vendors, is being installed and will soon be available for researchers across the country. Competition is as much a part of the research environment as any other part of our economy and that competition occurs on a global scale. HPC is a fundamental and strategic resource for competitive research. We are experiencing a significant growth in demand for HPC resources. This demand is fueled by three main factors: (1) researchers are continuing to refine and optimize their projects to take advantage of the resources and stay competitive in their field; (2) there has been a constant growth in the number of projects using resources at all consortia; and (3) efforts across all consortia to create HPC-aware research personnel have increased the population of researchers in both traditional and non-traditional disciplines requiring access to this equipment. Previous funding from CFI has also been one of the factors in fueling this growth in Canada. The international HPC user community is expanding at similar rates and Canadian researchers are very much a part of this international trend. It is our goal, for the present and the future, to provide the access, storage and support to allow Canadian researchers to work in a highly productive and competitive research environment, to focus on accelerating their research, to ensure they remain among world leaders in their field, and to bring the results of innovation to fruition. To achieve this goal, we must continue to ensure that the computing power and the technical sophistication necessary for Canada’s researchers are available when they are needed. We will also be exploring ways to bring the benefits of HPC to an even broader range of research disciplines. It is our synergy with the regional consortia and the research community that will help position Canada to meet the grand challenges in the economy, the environment and climate change, and medicine. We want to take this opportunity to thank the Scientific Directors and Principal Investigators and their staff at the seven regional consortia for their commitment of time and resources to Compute Canada and to recognize the essential support they provide to the research community. Andrew Woodsworth Susan Baldwin Chair, Board of Directors Executive Director 2 Compute Canada Regional Consortia ACEnet (Atlantic provinces, 11 partner institutions) – www.ace-net.ca “One thing that has impressed me most about bringing ACEnet to Atlantic Canada is the diversity of research which uses the equipment. Astrophysicists are modeling everything from the formation of the first galaxies to the atmospheres of stars, while computational chemists work on drug research. Materials physicists study compressed matter, while oceanographers and geologists compute models of the earth. In all these and other disciplines ACEnet is allowing researchers to solve problems with increased realism and resolution. The demand for the resources has been amazing.” Robert Deupree, Principal Researcher, ACEnet RQCHP (Québec, 5 partner institutions) – rqchp.ca “One of the most satisfying outcomes of the growing availability of HPC resources at RQCHP is that researchers now take new avenues, do research in an entirely different way and obtain results that would have seemed far out of reach only a few years ago.” David Sénéchal, Directeur, Réseau québécois de calcul de haute performance CLUMEQ (Québec, 4 partner institutions) – www.clumeq.mcgill.ca “Canada’s academic researchers rely on the HPC equipment and support provided by Compute Canada and the regional consortia as essential tools for their work. Our HPC resources enable them to develop international collaborative part- nerships and participate in the “grand challenges” that will advance knowledge and bring benefits to all citizens and work with the private sector to bring the results of innovation to the marketplace.” Dr. Denis Thérien, Vice-Principal, Research and International Relations, McGill University HPCVL (Ontario, 8 partner institutions) – www.hpcvl.org “The tremendous impact on the Canadian research enterprise of the wide array of HPC resources that have been made available through HPCVL and other consortia and now being enhanced through the coordination efforts of Compute Canada should not be underestimated. Researchers are doing research they had never thought possible in their careers, opening up areas to new research programs and collaborations. It is an exciting time when you think of the potential of all of this work!” Ken Edgecombe, Executive Director, HPCVL SciNet (University of Toronto and affiliated institutions) – www.scinet.utoronto.ca “The start-up phase of any new enterprise is exhilaratiing, but the design-build of the recently inaugurated SciNet HPC facility of the University of Toronto has been that and more. Our first difficulty was to find a location with adequate power, a search which took us well north of the city proper. The second was to choose an appropriate mix of infrastructure—which proved to be non-trivial. With the systems now chosen and installed delivering a peak aggregate power of ~360 Tflops, we expected them to be attractive to users. What I could not predict was how attractive! There can be no better measure of the need for HPC in Canada, across all disciplines, than the drawing power of truly competitive infrastructure.” Richard Peltier, Scientific Director,SciNet Scientific Director SHARCNET (Ontario, 17 partner institutions) – www.sharcnet.ca “It is difficult to think of a discipline not touched in some way by HPC; for many disciplines, HPC is now a critical compo- nent of innovation and discovery. Through training, skilled support staff and high-end equipment, SHARCNET enables the effective use of this new “engine of discovery” in fields as diverse as the environment, genomics, nanotechnology, digital media and the humanities.” Hugh Couchman, Scientific Director,SHARCNET WestGrid (4 provinces, 14 partner institutions)