OTTAWA, Ontario, Jan. 21 — Compute Canada Calcul Canada (CC), Canada’s national platform of High Performance Computing (HPC) resources and partners, today announced grants of nearly $72 million worth of state-of-the-art computing, storage, and support resources allocated to 212 leading edge Canadian research projects across the country.
 
These competitively-awarded grants will allocate nearly one billion processor hours and 10.4 petabytes of storage to the projects over the next year. Researchers will also have direct access to more than 40 programming and technical experts who are critical to enabling the efficient use of these state-of-the-art HPC systems. CC’s distributed resources represent close to two petaFLOPs of compute power, which is equal to two quadrillion calculations per second, and more than 20 petabytes of storage, equivalent to more than 400 million four drawer filing cabinets filled with text.
 
“Compute Canada’s extensive network of computing resources, data storage facilities, research tools and expertise is supporting projects that feed into a thriving Canadian R&D sector and contribute important socio-economic benefits to Canada,” said Bill Appelbe, CC's Incoming CEO. “This year’s allocations represent the diverse and leading-edge science taking place at research institutions across the country.”
 
The projects — which range from aerospace design and climate modeling to medical imaging and nanotechnology — produce results and breakthroughs that in many cases simply wouldn’t be possible without CC’s resources.
 
An example is Régis Pomès, Senior Scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children and Associate Professor, Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto, who uses his CC allocation for the development and application of computer simulation techniques to study biomolecular systems. Results from his research will lead to a better understanding of human susceptibility to highly-prevalent vascular diseases such as hypertension and aneurysms, and will facilitate the development of new therapeutic approaches for the treatment of numerous pathological ailments, including neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases.
 
“This research would not be possible without Compute Canada infrastructure because of the immense amount of computational power and data storage that is required for our work,” said Pomès. “Very few laboratories that perform molecular simulations have such cutting-edge hardware and technical support at their fingertips. Thanks to these extraordinary resources, we have recently been able to broaden the scope of our studies significantly to investigate biological processes of increasing complexity.”
 
At McGill University, Associate Professor Victoria Kaspi relies on CC resource allocation to support her research into Galactic radio pulsars, a form of rapidly rotating, highly magnetized neutron star. CC’s powerful computers are used to process massive data sets Kaspi obtains from the world’s largest telescopes. Thus far, her team has accomplished groundbreaking discoveries in the field, uncovering 45 new radio pulsars, including nine of the most rapidly rotating stars known to mankind.
 
“We are very grateful for Compute Canada infrastructure because our project involves massive quantities of data and demands heavy computational power that is superior to what we or any of our collaborators can access elsewhere,” said Kaspi.
 
From Canada’s West Coast, the global fisheries and aquaculture industries stand to benefit from Ben Koop’s use of CC infrastructure. Koop, a Professor with the University of Victoria’s Department of Biology, is using his CC allocation to study the role of genetic variation and mutation in salmonid adaptation, health, and disease. One of the fundamental steps in analyzing salmonid genetic processes is the assembly of a robust reference genome sequence, a computationally demanding process requiring high-powered, large-memory computer systems.
 
“Compute Canada provides critical infrastructure for these genome sequence assembly programs and valuable assistance from extremely proficient staff who help with the configuration, modification and running of the assembly software,” said Koop.
 
The partner institutions and resource centres that comprise CC are hubs of interdisciplinary computational research, connected from coast to coast by the high-speed national CANARIE network and regional advanced networks. Together, these distributed computing facilities work collaboratively to provide the expertise and resources necessary to give Canada’s researchers and innovators access to these world-class technologies.
 
CC’s resources are granted based on scientific merit and computational need. In addition to the grants for above average computing requirements, all Canadian researchers have access to significant default allocations of computational resources and support expertise.
 
For more information, please contact Bill Appelbe, Incoming CEO, Compute Canada Calcul Canada communications@computecanada.ca

Background

• 2013 Resource Allocation Recipients (PDF)
• About Compute Canada

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Source: Compute Canada

Researchers are harnessing the power of supercomputers and data centres across Canada to tackle national-scale research challenges

Ottawa, ON (January 21, 2013) – Compute Canada Calcul Canada (CC), Canada’s national platform of High Performance Computing (HPC) resources and partners, today announced grants of nearly $72 million worth of state-of-the-art computing, storage, and support resources allocated to 212 leading edge Canadian research projects across the country.
 
These competitively-awarded grants will allocate nearly one billion processor hours and 10.4 petabytes of storage to the projects over the next year. Researchers will also have direct access to more than 40 programming and technical experts who are critical to enabling the efficient use of these state-of-the-art HPC systems. CC’s distributed resources represent close to two petaFLOPs of compute power, which is equal to two quadrillion calculations per second, and more than 20 petabytes of storage, equivalent to more than 400 million four drawer filing cabinets filled with text.
 
“Compute Canada’s extensive network of computing resources, data storage facilities, research tools and expertise is supporting projects that feed into a thriving Canadian R&D sector and contribute important socio-economic benefits to Canada,” said Bill Appelbe, CC's Incoming CEO. “This year’s allocations represent the diverse and leading-edge science taking place at research institutions across the country.”
 
The projects — which range from aerospace design and climate modeling to medical imaging and nanotechnology — produce results and breakthroughs that in many cases simply wouldn’t be possible without CC’s resources.
 
An example is Régis Pomès, Senior Scientist at The Hospital for Sick Children and Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto, who uses his CC allocation for the development and application of computer simulation techniques to study biomolecular systems. Results from his research will lead to a better understanding of human susceptibility to highly-prevalent vascular diseases such as hypertension and aneurysms, and will facilitate the development of new therapeutic approaches for the treatment of numerous pathological ailments, including neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases.
 
“This research would not be possible without Compute Canada infrastructure because of the immense amount of computational power and data storage that is required for our work,” said Pomès. “Very few laboratories that perform molecular simulations have such cutting-edge hardware and technical support at their fingertips. Thanks to these extraordinary resources, we have recently been able to broaden the scope of our studies significantly to investigate biological processes of increasing complexity.”
 
At McGill University, Associate Professor Victoria Kaspi relies on CC resource allocation to support her research into Galactic radio pulsars, a form of rapidly rotating, highly magnetized neutron star. CC’s powerful computers are used to process massive data sets Kaspi obtains from the world’s largest telescopes. Thus far, her team has accomplished groundbreaking discoveries in the field, uncovering 45 new radio pulsars, including nine of the most rapidly rotating stars known to mankind.
 
“We are extremely grateful for Compute Canada infrastructure because our project involves massive quantities of data and demands heavy computational power that is superior to what we or any of our collaborators can access elsewhere,” said Kaspi.
 
From Canada’s West Coast, the global fisheries and aquaculture industries stand to benefit from Ben Koop’s use of CC infrastructure. Koop, a Professor with the University of Victoria’s Department of Biology, is using his CC allocation to study the role of genetic variation and mutation in salmonid adaptation, health, and disease. One of the fundamental steps in analyzing salmonid genetic processes is the assembly of a robust reference genome sequence, a computationally demanding process requiring high-powered, large-memory computer systems.
 
“Compute Canada provides critical infrastructure for these genome sequence assembly programs and valuable assistance from extremely proficient staff who help with the configuration, modification and running of the assembly software,” said Koop.
 
The partner institutions and resource centres that comprise CC are hubs of interdisciplinary computational research, connected from coast to coast by the high-speed national CANARIE network and regional advanced networks. Together, these distributed computing facilities work collaboratively to provide the expertise and resources necessary to give Canada’s researchers and innovators access to these world-class technologies.
 
CC’s resources are granted based on scientific merit and computational need. In addition to the grants for above average computing requirements, all Canadian researchers have access to significant default allocations of computational resources and support expertise. For more information on CC, its regional consortia, and its distributed resources, visit the CC website.
 
Compute Canada Calcul Canada can arrange media interviews with representatives from the 2013 Resource Allocation recipient projects. For more details on this, please contact us.
 
For more information, please contact:
Bill Appelbe, Incoming CEO, Compute Canada Calcul Canada
communications@computecanada.ca
 
Background:

• 2013 Resource Allocation Recipients (PDF)
• About Compute Canada