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Following an extensive consultation process last year, the Compute Canada Board of Directors has approved a Strategic Plan to guide the organization’s mandate and growth over the next five years. This strategic plan addresses today’s unmet needs and anticipates future needs based on current trends. For Canadian researchers to remain competitive, Compute Canada will continue to adapt to the changing research landscape between now and 2019. Click here to read the plan.



A national engagement of Canada’s research community to create a national forecast of advanced research computing, data storage and archiving requirements.

Compute Canada applauds and supports the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s (CFI) announcement of consultations in preparation for the $50 million cyberinfrastructure initiative. It signals an important step in renewing Canada’s commitment to this essential enabler of scientific and industrial leadership.

This initiative builds on CFI’s previous investments in 2006 and their ongoing support through the CFI-MSI program for Compute Canada, and it will benefit a significant proportion of Canada’s research community.

CFI is contemplating a renewal of the existing Compute Canada national platform as well as funding for domain-specific data projects. The bulk of such infrastructure would be operated and maintained by Compute Canada. To prepare for this initiative, Compute Canada will consult and engage with Canada’s researchers and research-intensive institutions to develop Sustainable Planning for Advanced Research Computing (SPARC).

This will be a shared forum for discussion among key stakeholders on the kinds of investment required to enable Canada’s excellence and leadership in science and innovation, with a particular focus on sectors that are highly dependent on digital infrastructure. As the national voice for advanced research computing in Canada, Compute Canada will ensure SPARC includes both specific and common requirements for its communities.

Compute Canada will gather input for SPARC through the summer of 2014. More info



HPCS 2014 in Halifax, Nova Scotia is fast approaching. New events have recently been posted to the conference program, including a Compute Canada Town Hall on June 26th at 3:15 p.m. and a Digital Infrastructure Leadership Council session on June 27th at 8:15 a.m. For more information about these events, check out the entire conference program.

There is still time to register for Canada’s premier supercomputing event. Don’t miss this opportunity to join Canadian researchers, analysts, and IT professionals from academia and industry to exchange the ideas, tools, and new discoveries that are driving today’s innovations in computational research.



SHARCNET is pleased to announce the addition of Conestoga College as its newest academic partner.

With 18 partner organizations, SHARCNET is the largest HPC consortium in Canada, with a long history of cooperation and collaboration. SHARCNET is highly regarded for its support and service to a broad and diverse research community, especially on the training side, which is what attracted Conestoga to us.

“Conestoga is a welcome addition to the HPC community and furthers our commitment to engage the college sector” says Dan Sinai, Associate Vice President, Research at Western University and SHARCNET Board Chair.

We look forward to working more closely with Conestoga and exploring opportunities for collaboration.



From June 25 to 27, 2014, Canadian and international researchers across six disciplines will be talking about their discoveries using High Performance Computing (HPC) as part of HPCS 2014. Co‐hosted this year by Compute Canada and its Atlantic Canadian regional partner, ACEnet, the annual High Performance Computing Symposium (HPCS) is Canada’s largest national forum for discussing advanced computing applications in research. This year’s symposium is being held at the Westin Nova Scotian in Halifax, NS.

Six conference streams are planned under the umbrella theme of HPC Serving Society. These are:

  • Computational Chemistry
  • Computational Materials Chemistry
  • Big Data & Analytics; Bioinformatics
  • Ocean Modelling & Climate Change
  • Oil & Gas Reservoir Modelling

Plenary speakers include:

  • Gilbert Brunet from the UK Meteorological Office (Ocean Modelling & Climate Change)
  • Frank Dehne and Ashkan Golshani from Carleton University (Bioinformatics)
  • Axel Becke from Dalhousie University (Computational Chemistry)
  • Nikolas Provatas from McGill University (Computational Materials Chemistry)
  • K. Sampath from Hibernia Management & Development (Oil & Gas Reservoir Modelling)

These plenaries will be followed by parallel sessions that include Invited Talks by key speakers, Contributed Talks that have been selected through a submission process, several sessions around data visualization rooms, and a Technology & Infrastructure section. A full conference schedule is now online.

HPCS 2014 will also include a panel discussion by Canada’s Digital Infrastructure Leadership Council, a session on HPC usage in industry, a Poster Session and a TECH Lounge, where industry and career-­‐seekers can mingle. Two days of technical tutorials for HPC practitioners will precede the main conference.

The conference is made possible through the support of a number of sponsors, including Data Direct Networks, IBM, HP, Xyratex, CANARIE, and Bell Aliant.

Full details of the conference, as well as speaker bios, topics and other information can be found on the HPCS 2014 website at http://2014.hpcs.ca. Follow HPCS 2014 on Twitter at @HPCS2014. More info



We are pleased to announce the 2014 Ontario Summer School on High Performance Computing – West, May 26-30 @ University of Waterloo. Register Now.

The Summer School on High Performance and Technical Computing is an annual educational event for students, postdocs and researchers in the areas of computational science. Jointly organized by SHARCNET (Ontario-West), SciNet (Ontario-Central) and HPCVL (Ontario-East), attendees are provided with opportunities to learn and share knowledge and experience in high performance and technical computing on platforms with the latest technologies. Five full days of summer school offers intensive courses on a number of selected subjects, including:

  • Programming distributed systems using message passing;
  • Programming shared memory systems with threads;
  • Programming GP GPUs
  • Parallel computing: theory and practice
  • Debugging and profiling
  • Using packages and libraries for scientific and engineering computing
  • Visualization

Registration is FREE however, space is limited. If you are registered and later you find you are unable to attend the classes you have signed up for, please let us know, so that we can give the space to others who need it.

Contact: Jemmy Hu, SHARCNET, University of Waterloo



SHARCNET is currently running its annual User Satisfaction Survey intended to measure your satisfaction with SHARCNET services and support. Users will find the survey within the SHARCNET web portal and are encouraged to respond by June 15th. Everyone who completes the survey will be entered into a draw for a 64GB USB flash drive.

Tell us what you think! Results from the survey help us evaluate our success in meeting users’ HPC needs and improve our services in the future. Summary results from previous surveys are also available via the web portal.



Compute Canada has released a final draft of its Strategic Plan 2014-2019 that frames and focuses Compute Canada’s priorities over the next five years. Compute Canada’s Board of Directors will review the final plan for final approval in April. As a last step in its community consultation process, Compute Canada is inviting public feedback on this near-final version of the plan. To submit comments, please email consultation@computecanada.ca by April 4, 2014.