Two of Canada's most powerful distributed computing environments--WestGrid and the Shared Hierarchical Academic Research Computing Network (SHARCNET)--are now connected over a dedicated high speed optical link, in the first step towards a pan-Canadian network of supercomputing facilities. The new connection was announced yesterday at the annual Ontario Research and Education Summit in Toronto. Distributed high performance computing is a powerful tool for research and scientific discovery, supporting collaborative research in such areas as human genomics, astrophysics, high energy physics, environmental protection, financial modelling, containment of infectious human and animal diseases and the development of nanotech. "A primary objective of the WestGrid project is to federate diverse and powerful computing resources, with high performance networking being a key requirement," says Rob Simmonds, CTO, WestGrid. "This work advances Canada's ICT infrastructure and is inspired by the emerging needs of globally competitive research." The link between the two supercomputing environments was made when Ontario Research and Innovation Optical Network (ORION) engineers completed the installation of a transport level connection between SHARCNET's entry point at the University of Guelph, back to ORION's Optical Exchange in Toronto. That's where CANARIE picks up the circuit and provisions a dedicated "lightpath" to WestGrid's optical infrastructure in Alberta and British Columbia. Netera Alliance and BCNet provide the provincial network connections in the west.