ACADEMIA

Canada's largest High Performance Computing (HPC) consortium formally launched its second phase of development at concurrent events at Western, McMaster University and the University of Guelph Tuesday afternoon. The Shared Hierarchical Academic Research Computing Network (SHARCNET) is a world-class consortium of 16 colleges and universities in a 'cluster of clusters' of high performance computers in south-central Ontario. Linked by advanced fibre optics, SHARCNET promotes research excellence while accelerating the production of research results - helping researchers 'beat the clock'. Paul Paolatto, President and CEO of Keigan Systems, which began as a spin-off from research at Western, demonstrates the world's first ultra high-speed incident mapping and management application designed specifically for First Responders and Command teams at the municipal and commercial site level. "Our first phase brought people and technology together and we're now beginning to see the development of some tremendously exciting projects," says Hugh Couchman, McMaster professor and SHARCNET's Scientific Director, who was at Western for the announcement. "HPC of this scope provides a fundamentally different level of capacity by enabling a wide range of very complex computations across many locations tightly coupled by a dedicated, high performance network." SHARCNET's 10 gigabyte/second network connecting most of its partners is the first production network of this capability in Canada. Since May 2004, the number of users supported by this network has more than doubled to 1,200. Five new partners - including Trent, Laurentian and Lakehead universities, as well as the Ontario College of Art and Design and the Perimeter Institute - were also introduced during the event by SHARCNET Board Chair, Ted Hewitt, Western's Vice-President (Research and International Relations). "Given their limited resources, individual universities are rarely able to assemble supercomputers of this performance," says Hewitt. "By pooling resources and strengths across the network, we are able to not only enhance collaborative research efforts, but produce tangible results at a previously impossible scale and put the province on the world map for HPC capabilities." Funding totaling more than $100 million from the federal government, through the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), and the province, through the Ontario Innovation Trust (OIT) and Ontario Research and Development Challenge Fund (ORDCF), as well as private sector and industry contributions, has enabled the construction of SHARCNET's leading computing facilities and the recruitment of top scientists to the province. A nice surprise for Hewitt at Tuesday's event came in the form of a $2.4 million cheque from Hewlett Packard (Canada) Co. President and CEO Paul Tsaparis, a SHARCNET private sector donor. SHARCNET is facilitating ground-breaking research in a broad variety of fields, including: *Western's Lindi Wahl uses SHARCNET to perform simulations of HIV and immune system dynamics that will have applications in the development of new drug therapies to both treat and prevent drug resistance for devastating diseases like HIV. *Terry Peters at the Robarts Research Institute is using HPC capabilities to improve image-guided surgery and to minimize invasive animal and human testing. His lab is creating a new, technology-based surgical environment. *University of Waterloo professor Edward Sudicky is using computational models to describe fluid flow and the migration of contaminants in ground water, which is of particular relevance following the water tragedy in Walkerton, Ontario four years ago. *McMaster University engineering professor Nikolas Provatas is employing SHARCNET to study alloy microstructure and to examine how material properties can be modeled and simulated to ultimately produce stronger, yet lighter, aluminums. *David Swayne, a professor at the University of Guelph, is using the network to create models that gauge temperature variations in lakes and ensuing environmental implications. SHARCNET has also been active in work with industry partners to beta-test new technology related to High Performance Computing and has begun establishing ties to international HPC facilities to explore areas of potential collaboration.